They call him…. Jim.

Do you have any names in your life that have just somehow seemed to always be associated with something bad?  In my life, that name is Larry.  If your name is Larry, um, I don’t mean you.  Unless you are one of THE Larrys in my life that have created this concept and in that case, go have another beer, you crack head, and stop reading my blog.  Yes, anyone that I meet that has the name Larry has, from the minute we meet, to over come my base stereotype that all Larrys are the moral equivalent to a giant festering bag of raccoon poop and llama vomit.  It is sad, I know, but there it is.

I’ve decided today that the opposite, the anti-Larry, the heroic equivalent to truth, justice, and the right to wear really fancy shoes every day of your life, is Jim.  I’ll accept the derivatives also of James and Jimmy although if you’ve reached adulthood and are still called Jimmy I’m going to wonder if maybe you aren’t a bit more “Robin” than “Batman” in this heroic theme.  Anyway, let me explain.  I was at the gym this morning trying out one of the new ellipticals and going over my blog-to-be in my head.  The elliptical was OK so I think I’ll survive the change.  I was about 15 minutes in when the PT that I had asked that one time to not do that counting out loud bit with his class in the gym was going around asking people if they wanted to join them in the gym for a free class.  I don’t know if he recognized me because I now have awesome hair but also because it’s not like we’re friends or anything.  I said I was only going to join if they were going to count out loud so that I could mess them up.  He laughed and said “Oh, we’ll be counting.”  I, seeing red and apparently being just a tad more confrontational than my normal, quiet, reserved self, replied with a sincere “Fuck you.”  His eyes got a bit bigger and he said “Wow, hey, you can come join us if you want.” and I said “I don’t want to join you, I want you to stop counting out loud.  Go in one of the rooms when you need to count.”  He actually looked like the thought had never occurred to him and said he’d think about it.  I was, BTW, yelling THAT line across the whole gym because he had started walking the other way after the “fuck you” comment.

Well, they start up the class and sure enough, the first thing he has then do (which I’m 98% certain was just to piss me off because they don’t normally start the counting until quite a bit into it) was count off on jumping jacks.  I got off my machine, walked over to the gym, and started screaming (at exactly the same volume as them, which was as loud as I could possibly go, which was somewhere between a jet engine breaking the sound barrier and a Pink Floyd concert) off random numbers while they counted.  Yes people, tact, class, and a knack for calm mediation are ALL my middle names.  The PT found this hilarious and asked for my name and introduced me to the class.  We discussed the concept of me trying to work out and them being loud beyond all reason and he had them doing running.  Some of the people running were counting out loud while running just to be dinks.  I’m certain they were all named Larry.  I went back to my machine to pick up where I left off but he immediately had them doing push ups and also counting those off.  I stopped my machine, got a towel and wiped it down, threw the towel away, and walked into the gym.  I’m not entirely certain what either of us said at that point but a couple of people that were in the class and part of the gym staff came to talk to me right outside the basketball court area.

They were snotty and dismissive and all that fun stuff.  They kept saying they’d talk to the general manager and until then they weren’t going to change the class.  I reasoned that we could compromise and they could just have the PT counting out loud (and not the WHOLE population of the class) during the class for today until the GM had a chance to talk about it and they said that in no way whatsoever were they going to change the class right then.  The class had already started which was the dumbest logic EVER for why they couldn’t just have the PT count out loud during those parts.  Eventually I went into the office with a facilities guy to write it all down and I was so pissed off because they were being so horrible about it all.  I mean, to the extent of “It’s not changing so you can go back to your workout and deal with it or be escorted out.”  Not even a single nod to how they were making fun of me and getting the people in the class to belittle and make fun of me or anything.  I was sitting in this room making the facilities guy repeat my point of view back to me for the 15th time because he kept getting it wrong and I wanted to make sure he understood what I was asking for when one of the other gym members came into the room.  He was a guy, probably in his late 40s, and honestly rather important looking even with the red face and sweaty hair from having just finished his own workout.  The facilities guy looked up and this gym member said, “I’m with her.”  I honestly started crying.  Someone was standing up for me and I wasn’t all alone.  He was so angry not only that every day he tried to get his workout done and every day he’d basically get yelled at by the people counting and he DID have headphones but he couldn’t hear anything on them because of it, but he was ALSO angry about how they were treating this young lady.  (Um, he meant me.)  He talked about how they were being bullies and ringmastering the whole class to make fun of me and no wonder no one else complained.  Facilities guy went to add this new man’s name to the paper he was writing everything on and he asked what his name was.  Jim.  Thank you Jim.  I was being taken seriously.

Jim also said that if they were to take a poll of the rest of the people in the gym, most would agree that they hate the yelling.  When the whole thing was over (and I missed half my aerobic and all of my strength workout)  I went to my locker and just started crying.  I never am aware, while into the thick of this stuff, how much it upsets me.  I hate when people completely invalidate me and don’t take me seriously.  It gets to me doubly because I’m the kind of person that just.  won’t. take it.  I fight back.  I won’t be walked on and I won’t be dismissed and while I admire and encourage that trait in myself and others, it does make for confrontation and setting myself up to take the brunt of any group disagreement.  Contrary to popular belief, that part I really really hate.  To have Jim in there backing me up and making me feel not only not alone, but to say BTW, don’t treat her so badly for speaking up, meant the world to me.  Thank you Jim.

On my way into work, I started thinking how funny it was that his name was Jim.  The other Jims that I know are also people that have meant great things to me.  In 2005, my mom married someone she had known in high school.  She met him at a high school reunion.  I’ve never hid for a second that my father/daughter relationships have left a lot to be desired in my life so it probably comes as no shock that this man, Jim, had to earn any of my approval.  Now, I’m not, ya know, unreasonable.  I wasn’t expecting the world.  I was just gun shy and pretty much ANY slight would’ve had a bigger effect.  He has been great.  He has been supportive and kind and concerned about me, my sisters, my family.  It has meant the world to me for him to come through for us all and I’m very happy for my mom.  Thank you Jim.

There are other ‘Jims’ in my life.  They know who they are.  Is it just coincidence that the name seems to follow such a pattern?  I don’t know.  But I can tell you, Jim, (and James), I appreciate the support.  I appreciate the kindness and I appreciate the investment in understanding me and showing me I am understood.

cha cha cha changes

I hope you are enjoying the pics.  I apologise for the dorkiness, but that is the hair.  That was actually taken before the first washing, however it really isn’t all that different now.  I have two hits today on someone searching for Yuko hair treatment disasters.  Hopefully, you will NEVER hear about that here.  I do have to say, for anyone moved to get a 2nd mortgage on your house for doing this as well, I think you need to have MEGA thick hair with a REALLY frizzy/gnarly texture for it to have such drastic results.  At least, that is how it sounds from the internet comments I’ve read.    In short, it isn’t a huge population that this would be worth it to.

Yesterday and the day before I’ve been thinking my hair looks kinda greasy or something.  It was heavy and when I touched it, instead of being soft it felt like I was rubbing finger paints through my hair. I’ve decided that the moisturiser that I’ve been using is too much for me now.    I didn’t use it today and my hair is much softer now.  It is so weird to get used to this.  I also need to get the ends cut off and it occurs to me that I could even get some kind of style cut into it now and that opens the door to having no idea what I want to do.  Most people have had years, by the time they are in their 30s, to have tried different hair styles and I’m just at square one with this.

My scale apologised to me today and made up for itself with an OK 161 today.  Considering the frozen coffee I got in the morning and the small cup of Cold Stone ice cream in the evening yesterday, it isn’t too bad.  I forgot that I was going to go to the gym by my work this morning so I just had to take my chances at the normal gym.  Everything was all put back together so that was good.  I was a little concerned they’d be handing out hard hats at the entrance for all of us.  They did end up getting rid of ALL the ellipticals that I like.  There are a lot of new machines so I’ll have to try them and see if I like any of them as much.  Hopefully although I’m really not big on being forced to change my routine just so they can stop using the ratty old ellipticals that were old back in 2004 when I started using them.  Yes, especially as an IT person whose tool of choice (the computer) is considered obsolete after just 3 seconds of use, I can see why they needed to do that.  I don’t have to like it though.  Today was a running day anyway so it didn’t matter so much.  I ran at a slower, easy 5.6 MPH pace for about 40 minutes or so.  I wanted to do 5 miles but it was getting later in the morning and I had stretching and strength training to do as well.  I did the back/shoulder machines today.   I have not noticed any changes in my arms from the work I’ve been doing.  I can concede that I probably need to do more than just 3-4 days of workouts to see any changes but what can I say?  I’m an immediate gratification kind of person.  At least with the weight loss you could see regular changes in the scale.  I wish I had some kind of quantitative way to see the progress in my arms like that.

I received my boxes of meds and needles on Tuesday.  That was a LOT of boxes of PIO.  Considering each one has something like 10 doses in it, I have enough PIO to stick myself with a respectable sized needle and lay into the plunger to deposit an oily lump about the size of your average silly putty ball in my rear about 200 times.  And yet, I say to you, THANK GOODNESS I don’t have to use those suppositories!!  Still, if you divide 200 by 7 you get over 28, which means over 28 WEEKS of PIO worth of shots.  Um, I am not planning on giving myself PIO shots over more than half of the pregnancy, thank you very much.  Actually, now that I think about it, there weren’t that many needles, only the PIO boxes.  I’ll have to recheck that for the needle amount.  It is so wonderful to have your meds prescribed to you and shipped out to you all by a doctor/pharmacy duo that you never actually have to see or talk to.  Ever.  It’s like the drive-through doctor only without the car or the menu pictures or the zitty teenage kid that you can’t even understand anyway.

Pictures of the Yuko Straightening Treatment

I just posted them all.  The background on some, BTW, shows the playset and the pool I’ve blogged about.

If you don’t have anything nice to say,

I’m not speaking to the scale today.  It was very mean and I think it needs to really stop and think a bit about the whole “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” rule.  163 today.  After working out (finally) and eating decently (finally) yesterday, it is not supposed to go up. 

Ignoring the evil scale, I also had a crappy workout today kinda.  I mean, the first part, the cardio part sucked while the weight training part was good.  I got into my gym and they are putting all of my elliptical machines out of the room.  All of them.  I wasn’t going to run today and all that left me was this messed up confused machine that didn’t know if it was a stair climber or an elliptical. 

I should also say that there were REAL stair climbers but ever since totally trashing my knees by using those things in college religiously every morning, I won’t touch them. Well, I didn’t KNOW that they were messing up my knees until I was very much out of college and post pregnancy where I had gained enough last-trimester water weight to have my doctor put me on uber every 24-hour preclampsia watch and to make my Aunt-In-Law inform me that I looked like I had elephantitis.  (Again, if you don’t have anything nice to say….)  I was trying to run and the pain got so bad I couldn’t even walk for weeks and via the totally accurate and “good as a medical degree” method of searching the internet I learned that the kind of knee pain I was experiencing was most commonly achieved by massive amounts of stair master use that unbalanced your leg muscles and large sudden weight gains that put pressure on said unbalanced knees.  I admit, the source is a bit questionable, however the “fortune teller” eeriness of how closely it matched my personal history made me 100% a believer that the stair master (and, um, NOT my ice cream and toast abuse in pregnancy) messed up my knees.  I will now never ever use one again.  Plus, they are hard.

So there I was with my schizophrenic stair master/elliptical thing and I was trying to figure it out.  I did 32+ minutes at levels 10-12 (the + is because I reset it to change the ‘program’ at about 2ish minutes in).  I did OK on it and all but the step width was annoyingly short and I never felt like I was getting a full stride in.  I hope they bring in something nice since they got rid of the older ellipticals that I like so much.  After my shower as I was leaving I noticed that they also got rid of most of the strength training machines so I’m glad they were there for my workout.  One of the other people there said that the gym by my work was finished and open now so I’ll most likely be using that one for the remainder of the week.  Hopefully by then they will have finished whatever they are doing there.  Speaking of the strength training, I used the shoulder/chest stations today.  I’d like to brag that I was NOT using the easiest setting on these.  No, this world class athlete was using the SECOND easiest setting.  See that?  I rock, yes I do.

 In the surrogacy world, there is another surrogacy blog titled The bump Fairy.  She is further along than me.  She is actually pregnant, which seems like the other side of the ocean from me at this time.  She happened upon my eggdonation blog site and left me a nice comment and is linking that one to her site.  Very cool!  Thanks bump fairy! 🙂  If anyone else gets a chance, in the absence of anything interesting happening on the surrogacy front(because we all know how thrilling a daily blog of “still waiting” would be), it’d be nice to have people post comments or whatever on things they’d like me to talk about.  Thus, if there is ANYTHING you have to say about the gestational carrier stuff (even if it ISN’T nice), please feel free to post it over there so I have something to talk about.  Thanks!

Hey you Sexy Kitten!

I have a search engine hit on straightening curly hair and on very long hair.  I do not know how.  I typed those into Google and went about 5 pages deep and never came across my page.  It must be some blog specific one but even then, kudos to whomever you are because you, my friend, are persistent.

Speaking of that whole Yuko straightening treatment, I have to say so far I’m still quite pleased.  I did get some pictures of myself yesterday before the first shower.  I’ll get those posted as soon as I can… maybe tonight.  I’m trying to decide which one to post.  The best ones are the ones where my daughter ran up and wanted to be in the pictures too.  I’ll probably post those although then it would show off how I didn’t get her hair all brushed out.  Bad parenting proof is never good for the internet.  The only thing is that the other ones without her somehow ended up with this really bad ‘sexy kitten’ look to it and when I say ‘really bad’ I don’t mean ‘dirty’ bad, I mean ‘ugly’ bad.  If it was ‘dirty’ bad I’d still post it and be terribly proud.  Imagine Patrick Swayze in heals and a long hair wig pouting at the camera and you get the idea.  I don’t know why they look like that.  I was honestly NOT trying to smile like that at all.  

Pictures aside, I washed my hair this morning and I’m still pretty happy.  It hasn’t dried all the way yet so I still reserve the right to change my mind but as it stands, it is nice.  It isn’t as nice as it was with the flat iron before I showered.  There is a tad bit more texture to it.  That amazing sleek shine is not there.  It is soft and velvety to touch, which my hair has NEVER been (petting a llama people, that was my hair before.)  It is controlled and flat enough that I do not have it put up and I’m still comfortable and not dying to get it out of my face.  I can even tuck the front part behind my ears and it fits back there and doesn’t just fall back in my face.  Even more on the plus side, I could put in some efforts in the morning to brush and dry it even straighter and I might get that slick sheen back without hours of effort.  Yep, it is doing well.  I just need to make an appointment now to get ~2 inches off the ends cut off and I’ll be set until it grows out.  Hopefully that will be in at least 6+ months.

I finally made it back to the gym today.  Well, back to the gym where I actually worked out.  I went for a run this morning and found out that I became super-wuss while I was away.  I hit it up to 6.1 MPH and by about 1.5 miles in I was whining in my head about how I wanted to slow it down.  I was having none of it though and kept going.  It is great how “I am strong, I can do this.” repeated over and over in your head can help… until you lose the concept of what the words mean and you start to wonder what exactly they are saying on that Fox news channel in the corner.  I was pretty sure I was going to hurl by 2.75 miles but I’m mildly proud to say that I finished off the 3 miles at 6.1 MPH for the whole thing.  When I was done, I had to walk around a little to avoid the nausea so I’m thinking it was probably good that I didn’t spring for the full 5 miles.  Hey, I DID only get 5 hours of sleep last night so I’m using that as my excuse.  I can only say that I plan to improve. 

After the run I did my normal stretching and then headed to the strength training area.  I did 8 more sets of 10 reps each on the arms stations to significantly pound my arms into tapioca.  I’m pretty sure they will hurt sometime in the next 36 hours.  In fact, I actually had a hard time washing my hair out with those same arms afterwards.  The really sad thing was that on the last set I did, I was having a hard time finishing the 10 reps.  I went to move it to the next weight down and I couldn’t.  I was on the easiest setting.  Um, ya… that is not exactly a confidence booster right there.  At least I made myself finish them anyway.  On my way back to the shower the PT there was instructing a woman who looked pretty much like my build to do 3 sets of 6 push-ups with the ball under one hand.   I choked a little on my own spit then but I don’t think anyone noticed.

So, the weight I have to get back out from under?  The offical results are 162.  Humph.  It could be worse, I guess.  Hey, I’m still wearing my size 10 capris today so it can’t be that bad.

And I would like to thank all the little people….

I’ve been sitting on some pretty exciting news!  Well, exciting for me – probably not so much for you but you are reading my blog after all.  I have been asked to blog for someone at their site.  It is for the surrogacy stuff.  I’ve just made my debut blog at http://robyn.eggdonationagency.com.  If you get a chance to check it out, I’d love it!  This is strictly surrogacy stuff so if you’re getting tired of hearing me talk about my amazing kids and my workout routine (as if), that’s where the just surro stuff will be.  I cannot tell you how amazing it is to have someone tell me they like my blog enough to ask me to write for them.  I am so amazingly flattered.  Hopefully they will be happy.

I was thinking yesterday about what to do today when it occurred to me that I’m probably frighteningly close to not getting 12 days in the gym this month for my insurance to cover their part of the dues.  Too many workouts at home and outside.  That made me decide that even if I couldn’t sweat I’d still just stop into the gym in the morning to get ready there.  I know, totally pathetic, but hey, I wanna get my 12 days in.  Anyway, I wrapped my hair up in a towel and got into the shower to wash without getting my hair wet.  I then unwrapped my hair when I got out of the shower and I’m certain I looked like I was nuts getting out of the shower with towel-wrapped dry hair.  Oh well.  I looked like a BEAUTIFUL nut with my amazing hair! LOL! 

For lunch today, I didn’t have the cash on hand to buy my normal salad here at work.  I instead went to my car, told Magellan that I wanted a grocery store in the area, and selected the one without the chain store name.  I was dubious of what it gave me, but I followed the directions anyway to see what I got.  It was this little grocery store like what you’d find in a really small town.  Nice, small, but not organic or wholefoods-like.  In fact, the only thing organic or wholefoods-like in the store was the unshaven, frighteningly skinny older looking guy that passed me in the veggie aisle.  I don’t really think he was organic but he was hippie-like so it was close.

While I was having my hair done, I was reading through this healthy living type magazine.  Actually, that was my 2nd magazine, but whatever.  There was an article in it about not peeling your foods.  I normally don’t do this because I know the peel has more nutrients.  There was a food in there though that I didn’t know you could eat without peeling.  The kiwi.  I love kiwi.  The thought of eating that fuzzy rind is not appealing.  Generally, having fuzzy things in my mouth is not something that I would blog about unless I perchance wound up with a stray caterpillar flying through the air and landing unwittingly in my open mouth.  This is why I don’t drive with my head out the window of my car… all the flying caterpillars.  At least, not with my mouth open anyway.  Unlike my older sister, I’m not into eating bugs.  I am into eating healthy though and so I figured when I saw the bin of fresh kiwis today at this store, I’d get one and give it a try.  I have to say, it wasn’t that bad.  It was MUCH easier to eat when you can just bite into it like an apple.  Once you accept that you are eating the peel, the fuzziness doesn’t bother you so much.  I think it was more mental than anything else.  At the end of it all, my review on unpeeled kiwis is thumbs up!

My kids hair smells odd

YES!  I finally got my first search engine hit!  It is so funny what people write into that search engine thinking you are all annon and searching around for whatever and blam-o, someone picks it up out of their stats.  It’s good for a chuckle though, and if this is you, I’m very sorry.  Actually, my kids hair has never really smelled odd.  I am most likely the most fragrant of the crew today having not showered all day.  I also can’t shower tomorrow until after work so… yuck.  I can wash, just not my hair.  I will get a picture eventually but keep in mind, I’m about 3 generations behind in my photo editing and scrapping at this point so actually getting the picture off my camera and posted online is paramount to actually finishing ALL of the laundry in the house on any given weekend.  Also, what will really be the interesting picture is what my hair looks like after the first wash.  Until then, it is just the straight iron look which is amazing and wonderful, but not terribly ground breaking. 

So, this morning no one made me get out of bed to stay until 9:30.  I was out around 5ish to settle Asher back down and Gavin and his sleep-over friend got up at 5:30 to play video games (what kids DO that?  Aren’t they supposed to stay up all night and then force us to throw them into the pool out back to wake them up around noon?)  It was blissful.  I finally did get myself up and heard Ash kinda talking in his room so I opened the door and he is sitting in his rocking chair reading a book with his blankie on his lap as happy as could be.  These kids crack me up.  Asher is perfectly capable of getting out of his crib and out of his room whenever he wants.  He does it often enough when I’m in the room.  He just doesn’t do it at night.  Anyway, it was so cute to see him reading his little Blues Clues book in the chair.  Then I noticed the scent.  Yes people, two days in a row.  Yay for regularity and all that, but honestly, ew.  Maybe we need better diapers or something.  I check the crib and sure enough, there will be another load of bedding going through the machines this morning.  I cast a leery eye his way on the chair and he giggles up at me as I pick him up and sure enough, the back of his pants and shirt are leaving poop fairy prints all over the chair.  SO, everything gets cleaned up and I remove the chair cushion cover.  Well, it was still cute.

Tomorrow morning will be my last non-workout morning.    I can’t wait to get back into things.  Since I can shower tomorrow night, I might try to get in tomorrow after work to workout and then shower after.  Kris is healed and back to his routine (although the slacker is taking another whole week off from work) so he can handle a pick up or drop off.  I’m gonna try to get him to do both since I’ve spent a week doing both myself.

Happy Googling! 🙂

I can’t stop touching my hair

I was browsing the internet when I came across this bridge story from the MN bridge collapse.  Is it just me, or does it make us Minnesotans look like total hicks?  Good grief, “Curious Minnesotans”, aka grandma and grandpa I have nothing better to do than watch them build a bridge all day long.  I had a dream last night that I was driving with my brother Ryan in the passenger seat.  We were on a bridge that didn’t have any ledge or guardrail or anything on the left side.  There was just  the bridge, and then no bridge.  I thought this was very odd and was about to say “Does something seem really off to you?” when the road under us started to crumble and the whole thing fell out from under us.  Our van was falling and tilting head down and I was saying to my brother (as well as to myself)  “Don’t worry, we’ll be just fine.”  The thing was, I believed it.  I figured, we had on our seat belts and we’d land on the tires and everything would be fine.  I’m not sure why I wasn’t worried, especially since the van was actually tilting downward and spinning and I’m pretty certain that we had been falling for about 5 minutes while I was talking so odds are we’d have been minivan dust and dental record material by the time we touched down, but I wasn’t.  I didn’t get a chance to find out because either I woke up or I just don’t remember any more of the dream. 

This morning, my children conspired against me.  They woke up at 6:30, right when my alarm went off and I was supposed to head to the gym.  Jessie was calling for me as was Ash.  This was odd behavior for my kids at 6:30.  When I went in to get Ash, I learned why he was up.  The poop fairy had visited in the night.  I held him at arms length while bringing him to the shower.  I undressed him and washed him off and then got him dressed. Ugh, that smell!  You know when they say “A face only a Mother could love.”?  Well, this was a smell only a Mother could stand, and I’m not certain I’d have been able to stand that for very long.  I collected all his bedding and pjs and everything and shoved it into the wash as carefully as possible and set it to a hot setting.  Gross.  While I was washing things, the husband that was supposed to be watching the kids that morning so I could hit the gym got up and said good morning.  By then, it was pretty late and it was clear I wasn’t making it to the gym.  THAT, is why I should’ve gone in night last night.  Now I can’t go because of my hair straightening and I can’t get it wet, or even put it in a pony tail, for 48 hours.  This scares me folks.  I really really am scared of ever stopping or going the other way.  I don’t want to go back.  I know I can’t workout for awhile now and it bugs me like you wouldn’t believe.  Hopefully it has just been circumstances and not some ingrained ‘giving up’ mindset that took over when my weight stopped going down. 

Speaking of my hair appointment, well, so far so good.  My hair looks AMAZING.  Of course, it has just been straight ironed along with all the other stuff done to it so it kinda has to look like this.  The real test will be after I shower on Tuesday morning.  We’ll see if it still is so slick and straight.  I was there from 11AM to 5:30PM.  As people came in for normal hair stuff they would ask about what we were doing.  They would explain it was the Yuko hair straightening treatment and how it’s like a straight perm.  Then the people would invariably make some comment about how they have the opposite problem or how they WISHED they had curly hair or how nice it must be to have my problem.  Um, whatever.  First of all, my hair wasn’t curly.  It was frizzy and gnarly and big.  There was some curl in there but it was lost under all the kinks and frizz.  Second of all, these people that were saying it had beautiful hair and they were having it styled however they wanted because they could.  I’ve been stuck wearing my hair long and pulled back since I was 12 because there was literally nothing else that I could do.  Sure, it sucks to have thin hair.  It also sucks to have enough hair to cover 5 mad scientists heads as well as an entire shag llama.  (I’m certain they exist.)  I really hate when people are sarcastic about how lucky I am to have my hair and how ungrateful I am to hate it so much.  Anyway, it is now all flat and silky and soft to touch and I’m in love with it!!  I’m a little irked that I can’t pull it back (because that would put a kink in it) for the 2 days since I’m not used to leaving it down at all, but I think with it all silky like this I can manage.  I’m thinking that if I get really desperate I can use a headband to push it out of my face without doing much kinking.

So afterwards, I had to pay obviously.  Here’s something you may not have known about me.  (Or, if you know me in real life, you just might.)  I’m totally intimidated by the tipping concept.  I don’t want to look cheap and I never know what is the right amount.  When I’m put on the spot, I usually panick and make a snap choice to avoid looking like I am putting much thought into it.  Usually that ends up having me tell people to just keep the change and WAY WAY overpay.  (Ya, I know you remember the pizza delivery incident in college when everyone keeps repeating “And it wasn’t even a hot guy, it was a GIRL!”  Hahaha)  The thing is, that happens to me a LOT.  That happened today.  I panicked and told her to keep the whole amount I paid to hold the booking date as her tip and ended up giving her a 24% tip.  This wasn’t really as bad as I normally do but it was a lot.  I don’t know… how much do you normally tip hair people?  The good news is that if I need to have more done after I finally get to wash it I’m pretty sure they’ll be good to me, right?

Soltice greetings Father Sun

Happy Summer Solstice!!  What a beautiful day for the longest day of the year!!  Too bad Gavin isn’t feeling well so he could watch the solstice sunset with me.

As the day draws to a close, I cannot help but try very hard to talk myself both into and out of heading to the gym – or at least taking a run around the neighborhood.  You see, the part of me that wants to is insisting that even after getting my running clothes on and being about to head out the door over my lunch hour (I was working from home today), I did not make it on an actual run because there was too much buzz going on with work stuff over my e-mail.  I didn’t want my manager to ask me for something and not get a response from me even though it WAS a legit lunch-hour break activity.  Something about working from home and knowing that the 10 minutes you took not too long ago to change laundry loads and put some clothing away is noooot exactly what you should be doing while ‘at work’.  Oh, and the 3 hours spent on minesweeper. I was then planning on hooking the bike stroller up to my bike and riding to and from daycare to pick up the kids.  That was foiled when I couldn’t find the bike attachment anywhere for the stroller.  The part of me that doesn’t want to is saying that I’ll just get up early tomorrow morning a mere 10 hours from now and put in a good run so why bother now.  There is another part that is reminding me just how totally crappy I ate today with all the food in my house around me all day but that part shuts up when I give it more veggi crisps.  (For the record, I only ate 1/2 a serving and then I put the bag away.)  I really do want to find that blasted bike attachment because I can’t wait to go pick them up with the bike.

Other e-mail fun today was getting my medical protocol for my surrogacy stuff.  We finally have a new date for the transfer!  It looks like August 3rd will be it.  If that works out,  we’d have a due date in April.  That’s the diamond birth stone.  Not that I’ve already gone out and ordered my guys matching diamond belt buckles or anything just yet.  No, I’ll believe it is real this time when it actually happens.  We were matched before Thanksgiving and were told we’d probably be able to do our transfer in February.  Well, it’s not February.

OK, I’m back.  Sorry for the interruption.  The doorbell just rang at 9:30 at night.  Um, that’s a little late, I think.  I opened the door and it is one of the neighbor boy’s mom.  This boy is 5 years old and plays with my son a lot.  (Gavin is 8, almost 9.)  I don’t know if I should really say play because mostly he follows Gavin and his other 8 year old friend around all day.  When he is around, and if Ash is napping I won’t let them play inside because he is so LOUD.  Still, I feel for him because he always has full run of  the neighborhood all day long.  I would NOT have let my 5 year old do that.  Heck, I don’t let my 8 almost 9 year old do that.  If he doesn’t tell me where he is going if he leaves the yard, he gets grounded.  So, this boy’s mom asks if Gavin is here.  I say yes, but he is sleeping off a migraine.  (Which he is, poor guy.  He has gotten these since he was old enough to tell us his head hurts.)  Then she asks if her son is here.  Um, it is 9:30 at night.  You’re going door to door asking if your son is there?  It would be understandable if it was a one time thing.  Kids do from time to time misbehave and leave when you are not looking.  But she’s done this a number of times.  One time she heard my kids playing downstairs and said “No, I hear him down there.” and tried to come into our house after we told her he wasn’t here.  Hey, if you’re so worried we’re keeping him I’d suggest keeping a better eye on him lady.  I am sure she’ll find him eventually.  Then the sad thing is that he’ll be up and running around and very much NOT grounded tomorrow and doing the same thing.

While today is the first day of actual summer, I always know that on solstice we start going the other way.  It is extra sad this year because it really feels like we JUST finally got warm enough weather to go outside and enjoy it.  The pool is out, the garden is growing, and our grass isn’t dead and dry.  That’s a strange combination.

ERR 06

Hello again!

I’m loving my new stats! LOL! Thank you to everyone who visits and a big thanks for the comments too!

Well, I have to admit, I think I ate about 10K in calories yesterday. OK, not that bad but it wasn’t good either. I was working at a different facility yesterday so I didn’t have my cereal and soy milk there either. Instead I stopped at McDs to get a much loved egg mcmuffin which I don’t get often. I saw that McDs has iced coffees and I think the drugs they release from the drive through speakers were affecting my brain because I ordered one. I did ask for the vanilla one though as it didn’t look like it came with the whipped cream on top. Evidently I suck at reading the McD’s drive through menu because I totally confused the girl taking my order. She said there WASN’T a vanilla iced coffee and I said I didn’t know what it was then, but there was a picture that LOOKED like coffee with ice in it and to the side of it there were the three options, vanilla, something else, and something else. She was adamant that I didn’t know what I was talking about and ordered me something that had a coffee sounding word in it so I just went with it. I ended up with a plastic cup with a dome lid and a ton of whipped cream and some extremely nasty tasting iced coffee. Probably for the best anyway as it was so gross I just threw most of it away.

Once at work, I went on a little solo tour of the facility so I could check the place out by myself. They had a ‘fitness center’ there that looked pretty nice but it was packed with people. They also had a frozen food vending machine! I got a package of cookies while there where three cookies was ~100 cals and at 3 per day I’d be good for 5 days. Later at lunch I was still pretty good with a fruit cup and a salad. Then disaster struck. I went to pick up the kids and Cindy was handing out freezies right when I got there. Since they were getting in the car, Cindy said they couldn’t have the freezies (I wouldn’t have minded. There is already 1 package of gum, 28 assorted Yu-Gi-Oh cards, 38K crumbs, 1 uneaten bite of waffle and a squashed cake-type ice cream cone that I suspect actually came from one of my brothers in my back seats.) Oh the tears. We had just, as it turns out, used our last freezie last night so I was clean out of 2 and 4 year old crack at my house for the night and oh did they want freezies. Well, we really cannot be out of freezies for long at our house because the potential sugar crash if they ever got it out of their systems might kill me so I offered to stop at the store on the way home and pick some up. This was good because as my readers may recall, I needed to get some swim diapers for Asher anyway. We got to the store and I had to let the kids walk since someone needed to carry the freezie box. I got that and Asher went into melt-down mode because he wanted the freezie NOW. (Who taught my 2-year-old to say ‘I said NOW wench!’ anyway?) I ignored him and walked to the freezer section hoping for a little Popsicle to give them instead. The only frozen treats they had were these cookie ice cream sandwiches. Jessie’s eyes got real big and she was excited about that. Asher picked himself up off the floor long enough to grab one and walk merrily off to the candy racks. Oy. Back at the car, I was opening the sandwiches and taking a bite off the one I broke in half for each of them when I noticed… 500 calories each. Yes, these ice cream sandwiches had 500 calories and 20+ grams of fat EACH. Over the course of the evening, I probably ate about 2-300 calories worth of one of those. That was not good. OK, so not 10K worth of calories for the day but still… I felt bad.

On the good side, I did my workout again this morning. I didn’t end up running again though, instead I biked. I was GOING to jump rope as that sounded different and fun. That was, until I got the actual jump rope out (black and white with cow handles borrowed from the kids) and tried a few only to discover I kinda suck at jumping rope. Biking is FAST! LOL! I had to go pretty far to get a 30 minute ride in. I was loving the wind though. I was ~5 minutes off from my 30 minutes when I was at my house again so I decided to go as fast as I could around my ‘block’ (0.6 miles) until the 5 minutes was up. You don’t get the wind in your face and having to deal with turning when you ride on a stationary bike. This was very fun! I do not think, however, that I got much exertion in the whole thing because I wasn’t all that tired at the end. I did more push-ups though and it wasn’t any easier today. I think I’m actually getting weaker if that is possible.

After my workout I tried to check my weight with my brand new fancy BF% scale and it choked on me. I apparently weigh ‘ERR 06’ and my BF% is also ‘ERR 06’. This was hugely disappointing as even the error number has to have a 6 in it. Why couldn’t it be ‘ERR 05’??? I guess I’ll know what I weigh next week.

Oh, I keep forgetting to update everyone on my Yuko Hair Treatment appointment. I decided to go ahead with that. I will be doing this on Sat so I’ll have news about it after that. I refuse to say how much they quoted for me because it is so much that I’d be mortified to share. Suffice it to say that it is way above and beyond what anyone should reasonably be willing to pay for hair treatment. I do hope it works. I asked the woman if they had any kind of guarantee and that would be a big fat no. She didn’t SAY no, she kept saying I wouldn’t need it and of COURSE it will work and everything will be perfect. All the same, I hear the no loud and clear. I guess, pray to the hair gods for me for Sat or something because really, who knows what will happen.