Mistress of my Domain

I was standing in our room a couple of weeks ago, and I suddenly turned to Mike, and said "Oh my God, it's almost three months until the wedding." I've kind of been in a steadily escalating panic ever since then. I think Mike's starting to join me. Mike marvelled today that we have less than three months to go and when I broke down exactly how many days we had left (84) his eyes kind of bulged.

It's not just that the wedding is so close. It's that there are still so many major decisions we have to make. When we set the date for March 28, we had plenty of time to prepare and I got an app from The Knot magazine that had a checklist that I planned to use, but like everything having to do with time management, I dropped the ball.

( Long To-Do List Ahead... )

Stacey

I had my first doctor's appointment in ten years last week (and when Mike told the doctor about that they both kind of laughed/shuddered.)I have this really weird habit that when I'm nervous or get agitated I start smiling a lot. The first thing I did after I found out my father died was start laughing. All throughout my talk with the doctor I just kept smiling like a loon. I couldn't help it. I got the same doctor that Michael had seen the previous week and she was really nice. I'm not really good at describing symptoms for when I don't feel well but I tried my best to go over everything that I could think of; Mike helped with volunteering some things, too. I've been having some gastrointestinal issues recently and she said that it was possible that all the vegetables I've been eating could have been upsetting my stomach. Which she said, and I thought too, was ironic - try to eat healthier to feel better and somehow that makes me feel worse. She suggested some probiotics for me to try.

( Doctor's visit, antisocial, computer issues, drunk musings, etc... )

So I'll leave my musings for when I'm not doing some drinking.

Stacey

Happy Almost New Year!

I don't plan on making any resolutions to own any good smelling leather pants (anyone who watched Friends should get that reference. ;) But since I was finally able to keep my resolution last year, I thought I would make a few more this year. I'll hang on to my resolution from last year - to lose weight. Though I will amend it to keep losing weight.

My biggest resolution is time management. I think that one will help me with my other resolutions. I've been having the hardest time for ages getting organized and managing my time better. Even when I didn't have a job, it always felt like I had a thousand things to do and no time to do it in. And it doesn't matter when I wake up. When I lived with my mother, I regularly woke up at noon and sometimes a lot later. But when I moved in with Mike I made a conscientious effort to try waking up earlier. I talked with a friend and she talked about trying to wake up at 5 or 6, which I knew was never going to happen. But I was hoping that maybe I could eventually work myself up to 7. At first I was doing well, getting up at 8 and mostly 9. But lately I've been slipping and it's past and mostly after 10. I definitely want to try and get back to where I was before.

I've bought organizers to try and help, but they've never worked much before. I don't use it like most people probably use it. I write down my appointments and work schedules, but instead of writing down the things I need to do in a given day or week ahead of time, I use it like a journal and write them down after I've done them. And the organizer I bought for this year was a completely wasted purchase. I had this great organizer, this fat day planner from Mead, but I couldn't find it and had to buy an organizer that was specifically dated for this year. Unfortunately, I only wrote in it a few times this year. I thought about scratching all the dates out and just using it for this year, but I don't feel like it. I'll just have to buy a better one for this year and actually use it better. I don't like keeping to a schedule, which is probably why I haven't managed to stick to one even though I've wanted to. I don't like feeling restricted, but I probably need more structure to be able to get better organized. Not a really, tight restrictive schedule but I need to have some kind of plan to know what I need to do for the day and write it down and give myself time to do it.

Another resolution is to eat a little more variety, especially when it comes to vegetables. I want to eat as many healthy foods as I can. I always says that I have an inordinate amount of taste buds on my tongue, so I'm very hesitant in what I eat because tastes, especially bad ones, are really strong and last a long time after I eat something. So I'm very basic in what I eat and stick to mostly simple stuff. But Mike knows a lot more about food than I do and he's very good about being a bit more adventurous in what he cooks and eats so he gets more vitamins and different nutrients. He's exposed me to a lot of stuff, some things that I insist I don't like, but I've really never tried before. Like Mike likes to eat brussel sprouts, he'll even eat them as a snack, which I found gross. But honestly, other than knowing that people, especially kids, hate eating brussel sprouts I'd never eaten them. One day, he just asked me to try them and I did and they weren't as bad as I feared they'd be. I wouldn't snack on them, but I can eat them every now and then.

I had this friend I used to e-mail with almost every day a few years ago. I met her online a long time ago, and lost touch with her for a little while until I e-mailed her one day and we just kept up with it. She was a great friend and was really good with advice. It always took me awhile to write, because as you may have noticed, I can be very wordy when I write. When I moved in with Mike, I just stopped writing her less and less because I didn't have a lot of time, but I feel bad about that and miss talking to her.

I want to write in my journal more and also to write every day. I had bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creative Writing many years ago and it talked about if you wanted to be a better writer one thing was to try and write every day, especially in a journal. So I bought a journal. I was good about writing in it for a while, but then had periods of stopping and starting. I've had that journal for ten years now and there's still a hell of a lot of blank pages, and this is not an especially big journal. I don't know if I'll be able to write every day, but whether it's in the physical journal, here on LJ, or just writing stories, I want to write as much as possible.

I want to watch more movies. I want to watch more TV too, but that'll be a separate post. It feels weird to say I want to watch more movies, since I should probably cut my television time. Mike said he read something somewhere where you should only watch two hours or so of TV a day. But I usually exceed and don't see that changing, though I have cut my time down considerably over the last few years. But still there's a lot of movies that I want to see. It feels like I barely watch any movies, because mostly I'm either watching TV shows or I'm on the computer. When I'm online, I don't want to watch something that I want to pay really close attention to, so I just don't watch a lot of movies that I really want to. I still have stuff on my Netflix queue that have been there for years and years. I have three moves from Netflix collecting dust on top of my cable box that have been there for over a year. So I definitely want to get those very soon.

I'm not good on the phone or talking to my family, but I have a couple of cousins who I really love and have wanted to get in touch with, but haven't found the time but I want to at least once to catch up.

I need to go to the doctor's ASAP. I haven't even had a physical in ages.

I have more, but that's all for now.

Stacey

I've always used Clorox bleach spray to clean the kitchen and clean Michael and my bathroom. I didn't use it at first. I used regular bathroom cleaner and this machine that machine bought to get rid of mold. But neither of those worked for the mold in our shower, but the Clorox does, for the most part. So I use it all the time. But I'm always worried about the chemicals being bad for me.

I was cleaning the kitchen and then the bathroom a couple of days ago and afterwards I got really queasy and had a bad headache. I think though that was mostly due to me, not only not cleaning on my usual day but doing it on my fasting day. I hadn't had anything to eat all day at that point. But still, I just would like to find an alternative to using the Clorox. Does anyone have any good cleaning products they use that aren't terribly unhealthy?

Also while I'm soliciting advice, does anyone know where to find a good strapless bra for a D cup? I've tried for years to find on with no success. The last one I bought I thought was going to work out, but it's just as crappy as the rest of them. It slips down whenever I lean over and I'm constantly having to tug it up. I wear a lot of shirts and t-shirts that kind of require strapless, but I've had no luck.

TIA

Stacey

I've basically been trying to lose weight for four years. I'd exercised and "dieted" before but that was when I got serious about it and kept up with exercising. I haven't had complete success with it. When I first started, I did lose 20 pounds but then gained it back. And there was another time when I lost about ten pounds, but again I gained it back. Part of my problem, is that I'm not good at dieting. I've learned to cut some stuff out, like I rarely drink soda anymore, but I have other vices I can't stop(I have a horrible Keebler Soft Batch cookie addiction.) I think if I had to choose one to do, I should probably do it the other way around and diet without exercise. My boyfriend's mother has been dieting for awhile, and she's been losing weight even though she really doesn't exercise at all.

When I moved in with my boyfriend, they had a Wii, so I would do Wii fitness all the time, but I got kind of down because the results fluctuated wildly. Sometimes I'd lose a pound or two, but more often than not I'd either gain a few pounds or stay exactly the same. My boyfriend was struggling with his weight as well so we decided to try going vegetarian. But that still doesn't necessarily mean eating the healthiest of foods. But we've done that, we're taking vitamins and we joined a gym. My boyfriend has been telling me that he's een noticing some changes. And I've definitely noticed it in him. But we hadn't really weighed ourself. So I told my boyfriend that the other night, and he said we should go to the supermarket, where they had a scale. I was very nervous and then was disappointed that I hadn't lost anything. My boyfriend says that your actual weight number isn't that important and we've only been doing this for a little less than a month. But still, I thought I'd have at least lost a little something instead gaining weight. But Mike still says he's seeing changes, and like I said he's definitely changing (his butt is in danger of being displaced by his biceps, as my favorite body part of his) so we'll just keep doing what we're doing, with a few tweaks.

Stacey