I used to be an adventurous person. I used to spend a lot of time alone, doing stuff. Wanted to see a movie? Didn’t wait for someone to go with me. Wanted to go to a museum? Went regardless of company. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a trend in my life. I wait for people to go with me now, and when no one is available, I just don’t go. I wait for Allie. I wait for Drew. I wait for friends. I wait. I don’t go alone anymore. It’s become so easy to just stay in my comfort zone and never leave it. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m loathe to travel more than 20-30 miles without Drew or Allie. I always dread it.

I thought in some ways I had grown a lot, in terms of confidence and security. I’m realizing I’ve become more self aware, not necessarily more confident. Being self-aware can be a curse as much as a blessing. I feel secure in who I am as a person, but I’m more keenly aware than ever of my fears and faults and allow them to overwhelm me.

So today I’m taking my muchness back. I’m riding the train to Oceanside by myself. It seems like a small thing, but I’ve never ridden a train, nor am I one for public transportation without a buddy. I hope this is the beginning of a lot more of me doing what I want and not making excuses for why I can’t or shouldn’t. I’m going to start getting out of my comfort zone a little more, start pushing those edges out a little, until my comfort zone isn’t just a little bubble around my house.

See you on the flip side.

I feel like I need more hours in the day. I don’t have sufficient time to do everything I need to do. I’m probably going a little nutty from lack of sleep. The exhaustion is deep and somewhat soul crushing.

I get up at 5:00am, more or less. I crawl in the shower, try to stay awake to get clean (my hair hasnt gotten back to a length where I feel ok with not washing it daily), crawl back out, get dressed and make myself as presentable as i can muster, make myself a cup of decaf, fix a container of yogurt with sliced fruit and granola and head out the door by 6:10. And them I’m at work. For 11+ hours.

Today I clocked in just before 6:30 and clocked out at 5:45. Then the Onramp by my office was a mess so I had to detour. To an onramp that turned out to be closed, causing me to detour again. I finally got to my parents house for dinner 12.5 hours after I left this morning.

That’s how it is, pretty much every day right now. And my day isn’t even over. I have to take Allie home and get her ready for bed. I have clutter everywhere, laundry that requires my attention (I’m looking at you, hamper of towels in the garage). Stormaggedon and Inky need attention and food and pets and baths. I have a mountain of laundry that needs hanging and sorting (last night I forced myself to stay awake long enough to fold it all, because I needed to feel like I accomplished something). The kitchen is a mess. I have seedlings to plant. I need more than 4 hours of sleep a night.

It isn’t just sleep, either. I can already tell this will not be the month we get pregnant. Our bodies are running on different schedules. We go to bed, or rather, I go to bed and he says he’ll be right in and when he finally comes in 20 minutes later I’m already falling asleep. It’s great.

I don’t even always have my weekends. Last weekend was packed. This weekend appears it will be too.

I just need the day to be about 4 hours longer.

I can’t complain that I’m working so much overtime. Lord knows we need the money. But part of me hopes it’ll be over soon and I can sleep like a normal person again.

Work is kicking my ass. Like hard. Not that long ago I worked a series of 50 hour weeks and it was hard, but I managed. I’m in the midst of one right now and I am not coping as well as I thought I would be. For one, I let myself get lazy and stopped getting out of bed before 7 most mornings. For two, I’m not having caffeine. For three, I am having my period, which makes the no caffeine thing seem silly in retrospect, but I would rather keep up the good work with the no caffeine thing than backslide and live to regret it more than I regret not having any in the first place. Run on sentence ran on. It’s making me feel a little loopy, very disconnected. I feel like I haven’t seen Drew or Monster in days (Drew and Monster are asleep when I get up, I’m basically asleep when he gets home). Couldn’t really pass up the extra money, though. Tomorrow is my 1 year anniversary at this job, too.

Anyway. Moving along. I’m totally exhausted and didn’t feel like really cooking (even typing this blog is becoming a real chore). I don’t have much to cook right now anyway, because our schedules have been strange and I haven’t cooked much, which means i also haven’t shopped much. But I needed to eat, because I was hungry and I can’t sleep if I’m hungry. So I rooted around in my fridge and came up with eggs, sourdough, mayo, good sharp white cheddar. So I made myself an open faced egg sandwich. It occurred to me while I was making it that egg sandwiches are a) excellent when you only have random components and b) very versatile. Have eggs, bread, mayo, lemon and spinach? Make aioli, smear it on bread, top with spinach and an overeasy egg and you have a Florentine-ish sammich (I like tomato on mine). A little hot sauce in the mayo, some good crumbley Mexican queso? Mexican egg sammich. the important part is having eggs, bread and, really, how well the egg is cooked. I like mine runny, with a good thick yolk. I don’t like it to be watery. I did myself a huge favor recently and picked up a set of good quality hard anodized pans and a thin silicon turner and it’s made for some amazing eggs, grilled cheese, pancakes, etc. I had to learn to cook again, in pans that heat evenly, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. My eggs were perfect. The yolk was runny but thick, the whites were firm and slightly crisped on the edges… delicious. I’ve found that pasta salads and mac and cheese are also an excellent “my food options are limited but I refuse to eat pb&j” meals. One of our household favorites is leftover mac and cheese, left over chicken or pork and a dollop of barbeque sauce. Also pantry dive tuna salad (pasta, tuna, peas, pickles or celery, etc).

I’ve used my homemade scrubs a few times and I’ve worked out a rough recipe for each the body and face scrubs, but both are very open to interpretation, manipulation and personalization, so I’ll give you the basic proportions I used and you can go from there.

Body scrub

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil (I have to stress using olive in place of other oils- it’s mostlike the oil naturally produced by your skin)
• 3-4 tablespoons of coffee

Your scrub may feel dry after it’s been stored for a while. I store mine in mason jars, so I turned them over and let the oil run back to the top before using it, or you can just drizzle a little oil in, mix it up with a spoon, etc.

Face scrub

• 5 tablespoons of salt (regular table salt)
• 1/2 honey
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• a sprinkle of baking soda if you want it to get a little bubbly and frothy
• if you want more scrubbing action, a little brown or turbinado sugar is great.

This one is really rough. Your mileage may definitely vary.

I’m going to bed now. Drew just came home and found me asleep sitting up at my computer. I just had to type computer 5 times before it came out right. Definitely bed time.

Last night I got a wild hair up my ass (thank you, Pinterest) and decided to take my skin care into my own hands and make my own scrubs.

I’ve been having a hard time lately, I’ve always had excellent skin but as I get older I’m starting to have some issues. I get acne breakouts before and during my periods (I’m almost to my next period and I still have the remnants of three huge zits on my chin) , my t-zone is oily but my cheeks are very dry. Even the skin on my back, arms, and legs is suffering. Especially my legs.

So I did a little reading and whipped up a couple of different scrubs.

The first was a coffee, brown sugar, and olive oil scrub. It’s exfoliating, thanks to the brown sugar and coffee, and moisturizing from the oil. Coffee has become increasingly popular in skin care products thanks to it’s properties as a vasodilator (helping reduce varicose veins, which I only have 1 of, tyvm, and reducing redness), the caffeine in it also helps dehydrate fatty cells, helping reduce the appearance of cellulite and make your skin firmer and smoother (which is why it’s being used in under-eye creams. It’s also an antioxidant. Some studies are showing a potential for cancer reduction by using it as well. Brown sugar is a moisturizer, and it’s gentle on my super sensitive skin. Olive oil is obvious- it’s more similar to the oil naturally produced by your skin than veggie oils.

Overall- Totally amazing. My skin is so soft today. The oil does leave a residue, I followed by scrub with a light soaping with a bar of Dove Winter Care, my soap of choice. I still had a bit left on my skin, but I slept overnight with it, and took another shower this morning and my skin feels glorious. Especially my legs. I can’t remember the last time my skin on my legs looked this good. I have a jar of the paste in my medicine cabinet. I’ll probably use it once or twice a week.

The other scrub that I made was less awesome but still great. It just needs a little tweaking. I am reluctant to exfoliate my face too hard, because my skin is so sensitive. So I made a scrub of honey, a little lime, a little baking soda and salt. The lime and baking soda made the scrub have a light, whipped consistency, which was really nice. The biggest problem was that there wasn’t enough “scrub” to it. I’ll probably add a bit of sugar or a coarser ground salt to it to give it more exfoliating goodness, but the honey did wonders to reduce the redness around some of my bad spots, and one that I had coming up is now going away. Drew kept commenting on how good it tasted.

All in all, I have every intention of continuing to make these scrubs for myself. They’re affordable, all natural and seem to work well with my difficult skin. Recipes will follow at some point.

I hate when you have mysterious injuries that you don’t remember getting. My middle toe on my left foot has a gnarly
bruised and scraped knuckle and I don’t know how or when it happened.

I hate when you think you’re getting enough sleep and then halfway through the day you’re trying so hard not to doze off at your desk.

I hate when you have warm comfy shoes but the inside gets all worn down so you put in new insoles but they keep shifting around and making your boots even more uncomfortable than they were without them.

I hate when your bra/underwear/clothes/socks are all pissing you off at the same time. Especially bra.

I hate that bra annoyance is such a regular part of my life. I mean, I can’t think of a time in the last two weeks where I was awake and wearing a bra and not keenly aware of how uncomfortable it is. I don’t know if it’s getting worse or I’m just noticing it more, but it’s old. I’m over it. It can fuck off.

I hate driving in and around LA or on busy So Cal freeways at any point during the weekend. Ugh.

I hate dust.

I hate not having caffeine.

However, I do love coming home after work to my own house, with my daughter and my husband and stretch pants and not being obligated to wear a bra anymore and being able to say “Fuck it, I’m ordering some pizza and having a big fat cup of decaf” and being able to kick my feet up. It fixes some of the hate.

Drew recently applied for his own shop. He got a call back today from HQ. So we’ll see where that goes. Even if he doesn’t get it this time, they know he’s interested and he knows they think he’s at least a candidate. Good for everyone all around no matter what. It would be a big promotion, though. He would be making more than I am, and we would be able to afford a car payment or at least manage to sock more away in savings. Fingers crossed.

I’ve noticed that I’m getting a fair few hits on my blog but practically no comments. Who are you people? Why are you reading about my life? (I’m not trying to say not to, because part of me is a desperate attention whore and needs your validation, kthnx, I just want to know why I’m interesting to you).

Last week I went to my ten-year high school reunion. Technically, it’s been 11 years, but we had a joint reunion with the class after us.

I went back and forth about going, right up until the night before, despite having bought a new outfit for the event. I remember high school as a period of isolation. I wasn’t actively persecuted, but I kept to myself and mostly my classmates left me to myself. I didn’t think I was going to have fun. I didn’t think a lot of people would remember me.

I ended up having a lot more fun than I expected. I really think Facebook helped bridge a big gap for me, because people knew more or less where my life was at and vice versa. We had something to talk about, we had already found some common ground. I still felt awkward and out of place but no more than I always do in a social setting.

I even had a couple of people tell me things that made me feel really good, like I had added something to their lives that they hadn’t forgotten. One girl told me she still thinks of me every time she turns the radio to KROQ, because of a conversation she overheard her first week of high school, just after having moved to California. Another told me that she thinks of me when she talks to her daughter about how much she loves to read, because I always had my nose in a book when I was her daughters age. It was so nice to hear. Refreshing. I’ve felt like I am just a ghost lately. Like I’m not really here, not really making a change, not making my mark on anyone’s life outside of my very small immediate circle. It instilled me with a little more confidence.

It was interesting, though, the way everyone fell into their old cliques. It was immediate. I guess old habits really do die hard.

Anyway. Here are some pictures!

Note the mom-face. lol

Me and my gorgeous date, Rachel. My bangs were already wonked out at that point and we hadn't even started drinking yet.

For the record, I’m in love with my nail polish that I had on…

This isn’t a very good picture, but it’s one of China Glaze’s Hunger Games shades, Harvest Moon. It’s a bright copper with a shimmer to it that shows gold and red. It’s lovely. We splurged and bought a bunch of them, this is one of my favorites.

Fortunately my body waited until after the reunion, but I had one of the worst breakouts ever this past week. it looks worse now because it’s scabbed over and it’s all dry and flakey around it from the tea tree oil I’ve been using, but yuck…

I practically never break out like that. Aside from the two heads sprouting from my cheek (I’ve named them Kuato and Evelyn.. Anyone? No?…) I also have one above my lip on the other side and two on my chin that are quite a bit smaller.

Also, for the record, my hair is already shoulder length again and I had it in a pony tail in that picture. Bananas.

I’ve been doing a lot of retention calls at work. It’s part of my job that I don’t really enjoy much, but it’s work, and I can’t complain. After several hundred completely ludicrous calls, I’ve had enough and I’ve compiled a short list of things that I think adults should know.

1. Know who your insurance carrier is. At first I was only applying this to homeowners/property insurance, but let’s be honest… You should know who your carrier is for all lines of insurance you may have. If you used a broker, they don’t carry your insurance. They just helped you buy your policy and collected some money as a result. If shit hits the fan, they aren’t the ones who are going to help you clean it off the ceiling, mmkay? That’s your carrier. I can’t tell you how many people adamantly refuse to believe we’ve been insuring their house for the last several years. The same is true with your car. Bought insurance from the General? Best find out who he bought your policy from.
2. Know your policy number. I can’t help you if I can’t find you.
3. For the love of God, make sure your information is correct on your policy. It seems like it should be common sense, but today I corrected the spelling on a policy that just renewed on the 15th term, and the name had been spelled wrong THE ENTIRE TIME. Same goes for addresses. Check your name. Check your address. Make sure you have the right coverage. Use a different mailing address? Make sure that’s correct too. AND DONT USE A NICKNAME. Is your drivers license issued for your full name? All of your insurance policies should be too.
4. If you move, TELL YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY. Chances are, we have some money we would happily give back to you, if you don’t need our services anymore. Plus we might need to mail you stuff. Just saying.

That’s a good start, I think.

I’m starting to believe I may be becoming a cranky old person.

This morning, in the shower, I had an awesome idea for a blog post, but by the time I was completely awake and ready to write it down, it had slipped away. Washed down the drain with the shampoo.

I had an amazing weekend, despite things not going as I had originally hoped. The plan was, originally, to have a brief weekend getaway, but something came up. Saturday was ok. Drew was off early, so we made dinner and ate together, the three of us. I made pork chops with a balsamic-apple-onion marinade, polenta, crunchy sprouts with garlic aioli (holy crap balls was that good).

Sunday was great. we got to sleep in a little, then went to church so that I could stand up as godmother to my best friend’s son, Logan, whose birth I was able to witness. The service was… interesting. Not to my taste, but I’m not one for organized religion, nor for the “Let go, let God” philosophy. But the dedication (as opposed to a baptism) was lovely, and it was beautiful that so many of Dave and Kara’s friends turned out to be there. As we were leaving, the rain started. We headed to El Torito for brunch (just fyi, the El Torito in Westminster has terrible service when you go with a large group). After brunch, we came home, got into more comfy clothes (I dressed up a little for the service, I had on a dress and boots and PANTYHOSE MY ARCHNEMESIS). I got dinner mostly prepped. We headed back out in the crazy torrential downpour and met Donna and Gabe at the theater for The Hunger Games (more on that in a moment). Then back to our house for some homemade pho. It was pho-kin awesome. As everyone was starting to head out, the thunder and lightning started. I love storms. Like, really seriously love storms.

Of course, this week has been lame so far, because that’s just how it is. We discovered yesterday that Stormy has worms, so today he had a trip to the vet. The vet thinks he’s only about 4 months old, and might be a corgi/dachshund mix. He had all of his shots until it’s time for him to get snipped. I am back to not sleeping well at all. I need to do laundry but all I can think about it crawling into bed and putting something on t.v. I think I’m going to do just that once I get Allie into bed. Drew will be home in about an hour and a half. The animals are quiet, I think it’s safe.

I don’t really have a lot to say right now. I’ve been in a little bit of a funk, it doesn’t seem to be attached to anything. I just feel weird and uncomfortable in my own skin a little.

Mostly, I’m tired as fuck. I haven’t been sleeping well and the time change is currently making me it’s bitch. I’ve been spending most of my evenings wallowing over a cup of decaf (I managed to find some decent organic dark roast decaf at Fresh & Easy. I’m a bit of a dark roast snob, light roast is for pussies, and be damned if I’m going to drink light roast decaf) and watching Supernatural. That show is like crack. Hot guys, muscle car, occult stuff… Totally in my wheelhouse.

I’m trying to snap myself out of it. I don’t have a good reason to be mopey and I know it.

Drew’s appointment last week gave us some insight on what we need to do to get this show on the road. So far, nothing major at all, nothing that’s going to set us back in any way. We have a starting point. It’s just a matter of starting. He has to lay off the caffeine too, but he’s not a coffee drinker, he’s a soda drinker, so it’s extra terrible for him. I found good decaf coffee. He will have a much harder time finding decaf soda that doesn’t blow.

Time to hit the sack, hopefully I get more than 3 hours of sleep tonight. I’m too old for this shit.