Too much going on!

I definitely thought I’d be posting more once school started, and I started spending more time online.  Not the case.

I’ve gotten a few FOs off the needles, and started more WIPs…but right now I just don’t have the energy to take pictures, upload them, etc…

 

Things have been really rough for me lately, and I don’t feel like I can share the non-deeply-personal-bits on their own as everything is so intertwined. Hopefully things will smooth over in the next couple of months, and I can share my struggles. Right now it is simply too exhausting, and too daunting to even think about things — much less share them with the whole world.

<3s

I promise that pictures will come soon…

…but for now I can only offer more words.

I’m tired, hungry and cranky! My usual response would be a long-winded whine about everything that went wrong. I am trying a new, more positive outlook in which I will still detail what went wrong, but I am also trying to figure out how to weigh my options and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Background: I have been attempting to follow a set mealplan as provided by Dr. McDougall. It’s a diet recommended for people with diabetes and for anyone who’s ever suffered from feeling crappy. It’s based very much on whole foods and eschews oils and limits greatly my soy-intake and is also primarily vegan. I have felt great following this diet for the past couple of days. It also feels great having my mealplans already set!

Second: The food requires a fair amount of preparation. It’s not too bad – but forgetting to turn the crock pot on can completely destroy a day’s meals. Because I didn’t have my oatmeal ready I had to make something to eat, and I was already up a bit late.

Not turning on the crockpot meant: I didn’t get to prepare my lunch. I put together a few things last night, so I at least have some soup, fruit and nuts for later. This is good.

Why no sandwich last night? : I thought about making my sandwich last night while I was getting everything else together. I decided not to, partly out of laziness, but also because I thought that it would taste yucky after having spent all night in the fridge, and then a day in my backpack. I wanted it to be fresh. I often have time in the morning, but as I said…no breakfast, and no time.

The big deal:  On Wednesdays I spend 14 hours out of the house. I will have to buy some food.  There are not a lot of choices that are vegan, to begin with. Vegan choices that fit my budget are even slimmer. Vegan choices that fit my budget that don’t include soy or peppers (allergic)? Even worse. Previously I  ate dairy when it became inconvenient, but I definitely think I have developed (or uncovered) a milk allergy, and I am hesitant to find out (hence this new somewhat restricted diet).

What I’ll have to do: I will have to eat something that will undoubtedly make me feel even worse than I already do, and I will have to pay money for it. I will then have to attend more classes (I have a small break in which I can relax, blog, etc… not long enough to run home) and work a full 9 hour shift. All while feeling lethargic, bloated and exhausted.

What I should have done: Obviously, I should have turned the stupid crockpot on. That’s probably the only thing I had control over. But sometimes that’s just gonna happen. I was prepared. The food was in there and the side bits of my meal for the day were prepared. It wasn’t laziness.

What I’ll do next time: I contemplated not going to class this morning. That would mean I had at least an hour and a half to get myself together and relax a little bit. This is what I will do next time.  It is more important to take care of myself in the long run, than it is to attend a class that has no assignments and no exams.

Now I have to go hunt down something edible. Luck!

I want cupcakes.

I came straight from class to work today, in hopes that not going home would enable me to actually get some stuff done. I had two and a half hours and I managed to do all of my homework for the weekend and put together my grocery list/meal plan for the coming week.  Except I still have 45 minutes. I didn’t really bring anything else to do because I didn’t want to distract myself from getting my work done.

I guess there is such a thing as being too efficient? Because now I am still just wasting time! I am racking my brains trying to think of things that I can do in the meantime, but I really am drawing a total blank.

I don’t even have anything interesting to post.  I’m still sick. I have this weekend off and I just have to make it through this last shift and I get to go home and rest!

On the crafty front: I did start something new and kind of exciting. I wanted to knit a panda bear, but wasn’t at all impressed with any of the patterns that i found, so I decided to make my own. I thought I could start with a teddy bear pattern and add some black circles around the eyes and knit the limbs in black… but then I couldn’t find any teddy bear patterns that I liked! I remembered that my mom used to crochet little bears for us, so I asked if she still had that pattern.  She did! I don’t like to crochet. I can do so adequately, but I just don’t…like doing it. So I decided to convert her crochet pattern to knitting. And it’s going swimmingly! I’ve just made the parts for a small black bear so far, to see if it works. I am currently working on his legs (and desperately wishing that I’d brought them with me today!). I hope to have him finished this weekend. After that? I need to try to knit a raccoon. This will be more difficult.

Leaves falling from the sky, like great big raindrops.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t get a lot of the fall-leaves-season-changing fun.  We do get some! But mostly we’re chock full of coniferous delight. Instead of leaves falling, we get copious amounts of rain. And today, it finally became fall here. Coincidentally, I also discovered that my shoes are not waterproof, and have no tread for staying on wet bike pedals.

I have been wrestling with a headcold for the past couple of days. It has not been pleasant, however, I am glad that the weather finally turned. Being inside sick, drinking tea while it is pouring outside is much more acceptable than doing the same in 80F weather.  Of course, the cold would make its presence fully known on the day that classes start!

I just hope that this is my “fall term illness” and that I’ve gotten it out of the way and can make my way through the next ten weeks bright eyed and bushy tailed. It’s alright being miserable and unable to focus while listening to the professors read aloud the syllabus – but less so when giving a major presentation in front of the entire department (hello last spring!).

I’m really kind of stoked about my term schedule. I’m taking some basic, easy classes and one of them I’m even taking with Matt! I start out with a 9AM Danish 101 class every morning. So far this has been fun. The instructor is a lovely young Danish man who insists on teaching us in Danish. There are only ten of us, and none of us speak Danish. I’m guessing that we’ll learn fast as he is unrelenting and fully willing to make ridiculous gestures and mimes until we understand what he is  getting at. This is how I think language classes should be taught, so I am content.  Go ahead. Ask me what my name is. I can tell you.

On alternating days I follow that up with either an “author’s course” in philosophy which is centered around Luce Irigaray, and a sweet 400 level semantics class. The Irigaray class that I am taking with Matt is looking like a bit of a let down, but interestin nonetheless. Irigaray is known for her writings on feminist and language theory philosophy. Despite the fact that an “author’s course” is supposed to cover all of the author’s basic ideas, we will only be focusing on her feminist writings. Which is cool, because she’s a “difference feminist” (focusing on the strengths of being different from men, rather than trying to make us totally equal) and I like that. It’s not cool  because, um, I want to read about language. I am the only one in the class who is interested in that   Such is the life of a lone linguist,  I suppose.

I am on my break now between Danish and Semantics, so I have not yet attended the latter. I love the professor (he taught me Gestures seminar last term), and I love the subject and all of my ling-geek friends are in it so I am sure it will be excellent.

We are currently promoting a fun and exciting coffee at work and for the first time, I can really get behind out promotions. We have a “spirit week” this week as part of our promotion, and our theme is “All the times when you wished you had a cup of coffee”. We’re supposed to come in dressed up in that theme. Everyone else is coming in in hunting, golfing, military clothes, etc… So I decided that I wanted to stand out and really make people ask me WTF, man? I will be attending work this afternoon fully dressed as Dorothy. It’s hard to get a good cup of coffee in Oz, kids.

That said, it’s time for me to learn some Danish alphabet.

Longest Week Ever!

I called my dad today to apologize for never getting together with him for his birthday like I had promised. He seemed extremely puzzled at my apology since his birthday had only been on Monday and we’d agreed on getting together in two or three weeks. The idea that this Monday was less than a week ago is painful and mind-bending!

I don’t  know why this week was so long! It just most definitely was. Matt worked a total of 52 hours by yesterday and still has to work security for the football game this weekend.  I also had a six day week that is being turned into a semi-seven-day week  (which then becomes a 12-day week)by adding on a staff meeting right in the middle of my one day off on Sunday. Yay?

I spent most of it feeling crappy. I didn’t get any creative stuff done, and really don’t have anything to say. I just wanted to post to keep myself in the habit of doing so!

I’m not feeling terribly well and am trying to decide if I need to lay down before I go to work or if I ought to get up and go practice my choreography. Both sound rather unpleasant, really.

But that’s enough Eeyore. Thanks for noticing me.

Lunches for the previously lunchless!

I finally got my paws on a copy of Vegan Lunch Box by Jennifer McCann. I know it’s been out for awhile, and that she’s got a new one out…but I’m slow, okay?

It’s like Heaven just plopped the answer to all of my problems into my Library Requests Bin! I don’t have bento boxes – but you can bet that before the term is over I most certainly will!

I have a bizarre relationship with food (and believe me, that is an understatement).  Something that I looove to eat at home, suddenly becomes the most undesireable, disgusting mush when I take it to work. At work there are all kinds of foods that are plastic and fake and filled with sugar and billions of other nasties and yet they still sound so much more delicious.  The same goes for taking food to school. Pop Quiz: Once school is in session how many  meals do I have to eat outside the house?

Answer: All of them. Starting next week, I have class at 9AM every morning, followed by a break, and a couple more classes, and then I work until 8:30 or 9:30 every night. I will probably be able to run home during some of my breaks, but it is more likely that I will be more focused if I stay on campus or simply head to work early (the benefits of working at a coffee shop are truly a blessing to a student!). This is especially true once the weather starts it’s 9 months of non-stop rain – and I  still can’t afford fenders for my bike!

This means that I will now have to full on face the problem that I have with eating packed meals. Now, for many (including my darling husband) the answer may seem straightforward. Just suck it up, and eat it Ani! But it doesn’t work that way. If my body decides that it doesn’t want to eat what I have, it will rebel in every possible way.  Simply not eating makes my blood sugar levels very cranky. So I end up buying food. Yes! Buying more food that is more expensive than the stuff that I already bought and couldn’t afford – and food that is infintely less healthy for me! AAAH! Why Ani Why!?

Which brings us back to Jennifer McCann’s un-ending brilliance. Small meals that have lots of little components and are made to make a seven year old happy. YES! That describes my needs perfectly.  I tried out 5 different menus this week and all of them went over extremely well. I ate vegetables. I didn’t eat a single thing from work.  Since my house eats tupperware for dinner, it was a bit difficult getting all of those components to and fro. But that’s okay, because soon I will be able to afford some bento boxes. Yay!

I can’t wait to try everything in the book, and then I can’t wait to go out and buy her new book as well.  It won’t always work like this, but I was able to bring my grocery spending down from $80 a week to $31.34. Impressive, no? I only planned out the lunches – and used the leftovers to create other meals. It was pretty bare-minimum, but since my meals for work were covered and fully nutrional, everything else was just supplemental.

Now! I  have to go plan my menus, go shopping, clean my house, and muck out the sad, dying garden. Days off, my bum.

Hello Fall – and post-nasal discharge. Ew.

We launched our fall promotions at work at the very beginning of September, and it’s been a pretty hard sell with the weather still being gorgeous and 80F. The past couple of days, however, the weather has been struggling to turn into fall weather. I am loving it, with one small expection. My sinuses have been hit hard by the weather changes. This year, I am going without my normal prescriptions that make it easier for me to tolerate barometric pressure changes, and that calm my allergies down. I have been wanting to be prescription-free for awhile, but never had the guts to do it. Being without medical coverage is a great way to just dive in!

I am taking tons of vitamin C.  I am also rinsing with my Neti pot and some essential oil infused sea salts. I have been drinking Nettle tea to help with the allergies, and I have also been drinking lots off ginger tea with local honey for that purpose as well.  I have some eucalyptus and rosemary essential oils that I set out in the bathroom sink while I shower. This is by far the most effective means of opening up the poor little sinuses, but it unfortunately only lasts about as long as I hang out in the steamy, scented bathroom. It’s not quite soup-weather yet, but as soon as it is I’ll be hitting the miso and wasabi soups hard!

I have a really hard time living here in the  Willamette Valley. I have severe allergies to all things pollen related and mold-related. I also have terrible humid-cold induced asthma. In short, this part of the world frequently feels like a special-made level of Hell built just for me (and  the spiders. Why are there so many spiders?)

I also used to love the fact that we have only two seasons here: mildly hot and cold and very very wet. Mildly hot lasts from July to mid-September. You can guess about the rest. I think I am really starting to outgrow my love for the Pacific Northwest. I’ve always felt that I would have a hard time living in a place that has all four seasons – or in a place that doesn’t have so many trees and ferns. I am pretty sure that I could never live in a purely desert climate as in New Mexico or Arizona. I would go totally crazy for lack of trees and green in general. I would also crumble to dust in the sunlight. I have been looking into going to grad school in southern California (Santa Barbara probably), and also in Colorado. Both sound intriguingly different – and far kinder to my facial cavities.

When I graduate in more or less two years, I will be certified and experienced in teaching English as Second Language and I will be looking to go just about anywhere. I may be going to grad school, or I may teach while pursuing a career in personal training. I am looking for a change, and I have lots of time to plan for it.  Our long term goal is to settle down in Denmark – but they  are not keen on allowing young non-EU citizens into the country. That’ll take us awhile.

What do you all love about your various geographic climates? Convince me to come join you!

…why won’t you release me?

I did it! I broke down and cried twice last night, because I just could NOT get the choreography down. I was looking at it all wrong, and I was stressed and focusing on the wrong things completely.

I finally stopped trying to figure out how in the world I was supposed to cue it and just learn the dance! I spent five hours learning that choreography. After my ten hour day. I did a wee bit of yoga, hugged my parents’ kitties and then crashed.

I was back at training at 7:30 this morning. I did better than I thought I would. Don’t get me wrong, it was still utterly humiliating, but I am 99% positive that I was not the “worst” of the bunch. Bottom three, definitely. But not the worst

That was just in the first run-through, where we taught only the first two minutes of the song (mine was 4:36). We were recorded and then we had to watch ourselves (did I mention the humiliation?) and we got lots of great, helpful feedback so that we could go through the whole song at the end of the day. In the meantime, we did crazy stuff with using barbells on our collarbones (yes you read that right) and our shoulders while salsaing and sambaing, and sticking tape on the heels of our shoes so that we absolutely would not put out heels down while Latin-dancing. We did tons of isolation drills which were something akin to torture, but really super helpful in the end.

When I gave my final instruction, I did so so so so so much better. I let myself get sassy and stopped worrying about cueing. So I don’t really have the instructor bit down, but I do know how I am going to get there.

The whole weekend was a brutal, grueling, amazing experience. I knew it would be if I could just get through it. I am tremendously proud of myself for going through with it and for pushing constantly. I don’t think I have ever really pushed my limits since my injury, and it was fantastic to be able to do so in a relatively safe environment.  While my body hurts so tremendously bad (6 blisters on the feet, two bruises on the bottoms of my feet, bruises on my collar bones and shoulders, and someone set my low back on fire) – the one thing that doesn’t hurt is my injured leg. My IT band is a little bit irritated (as it should be!) but it doesn’t hurt, and I never thought it was going to collapse.

I just got my brother to make me coffee. Now I need to see if I can get him to make me dinner and call a visiting masseuse.

Begging you for mercy…

Hi there! Look at me, blogging away like a big girl!

I am having one monster of a weekend. I think it’s a good monster, like in Monster’s, INC….but we’ll find out after tomorrow evening.

For a little bit of background (I keep saying I’m going to make background posts, so that I can just linky-link…but do I? Of course not. I promise, once the 90 minute  lectures start, I will be dying to write those posts!) I am recovering from a massive injury. Basically, I suffered an injury when I was ten, and it never fully healed (I was ten. Physical therapy? Not Cool). Three years ago, I suffered another, bigger injury on top of the old injury. I have been to seven different physical therapists since then. I finally found one who is both brilliant and willing to work with the fact that I live an active lifestyle and will continue to live an active lifestyle. Other PTs have insisted that I stop working at a job that requires me to be on my feet. These PTs have obviously never had the luxury of being a married student trying to get enough hours to make rent and have your workplace work around your schedule rather than the other way around. In the past 6 months, I have made more progress towards healing than I did at any time during the prior two and a half years.

When my local Gold’s Gym announced that it was finally gettiing a Group Groove training session not only in the Pacific Northwest, but actually in Eugene, I asked my PT if I could go. She said yes. Biggest excitement/scare of my life!

What is Group Groove? It’s a super awesome fitness-dance program. You get to do Urban, Club and Latin dancing and it’s a huge self-esteem booster. The tagline is “If you can move, you can Groove”. And it’s great – no one is looked down on if they don’t do the moves right, etc…

Today I spent 10 hours “moving”. I have learned that my body does not move the way it did before the injury. In many ways I am more flexible, but in many ways I am terribly inhibited. It was hard not to break down and cry sometimes because I would be telling my body to do something that it could have easily done three years ago, and today it came out as a total mess. I felt like I could not keep up with everyone else – plus I’ve never instructed before. Cueing is hard when your brain is filled with “YOU! HIP: MOVE OUT NOW SOLDIER. I SAID NOW! NOW! THAT WAS NOT MOVING OUT! WHY DID YOU NOT MOVE OUT?”   I feel like my whole body has been beaten with several baseball bats. And I’m currently just taking abrief break because I have to get up and practice so that I can teach a song tomorrow. I get another 10 hours tomorrow – and it’s supposed to be harder.

The instructor took pity on me and gave me what is probably the easiest track. There is the part  of me in the back of my head saying “she thinks you suck. Look…you’re doing “Mercy”. How lame is that? She gave up on you…” But I am trying to ignore that.  In all likelihood, she was trying to play to our strengths. Some of the really strong instructors got genres in which they were totally out of place and uncomfortable, and that will be their challenge. For me, just getting out of bed tomorrow is going to be a challenge!

Part of me just wants to cry. I do feel like I am doing terribly, and that everyone else in the class is just shaking their heads and sighing at me. But if that is the case, then I need to go work on it and show them just how awesome I am going to be!  But first I need a shower. Like…a 90 minute shower.

P.S. I am housesitting for my parents and their adorable kittehs! They have a hot tub – AND IT’S NOT WORKING. I’m feeling pretty indignant about this. If they go to Europe, I get to use their hot tub. It’s common sense.

Catch-Up

I never did finish my thoughts on my NoSpend week. I got caught up in lots of other things, and then every time I thought about posting, I thought about all the explanations that I would have to give and just put it off even more. But you’re not getting explanations! MWAHAHAHA! I’m just going to finish my thoughts and move on. Ingenious, I know.

NoSpend was more than just an interesting experiment for us. That week it was a necessity. Matt and I are trying to get by as two undergraduate students without taking out any more loans. This is tricky. I got paid on the day before I started the NoSpend week, and between the groceries that I bought and the bills that had to be paid that week, we ended up with a solid $4.00 in the bank. Total. That includes savings, checking, etc… Imagine where we’d be if I hadn’t focused all my efforts on not spending a cent! Believe me, I can’t stop imagining that.

I made a list of things that I thought about buying during the NoSpend week:

- broom

- FOOD! AAAH! I wanted cookies and ice cream and refried beans and tortillas and nachos and aaaaaah! Another thing to look out for when doing a NoSpend week? Try  to make sure that it does NOT coincide with a feminine cycle. Seriously. That sucked. I don’t know what I’d have done if I couldn’t get free mochas and hot chocolates at work.

-tea (I get free tea from work, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about every kind of tea that exists in the world)

-fenders for my bike

- socks

- rain jacket

- waterproof bag

- basket with cover for my bike (guess what type of unexpected weather we had…)

- flea medicine for kittehs

- a lovely house in the Danish countryside.

I know I saved money because I would have bought food and tea during the week and probably won’t do so now that the cravings have passed. The rest of the things (Danish house hopefully not excluded) will all need to be bought at some point. But by not buying them impulsively I can look for deals and bargains and maybe even get some of it second-hand (I think I’ll look for new flea meds though ).

As far as money goes, I asked my grandmother to help us consolidate our debt. We don’t have a lot of credit card debt, but we were hit with 30% and higher interest rates, making it absolutely impossible to pay off. I’ve always used the cards with care; never putting on more than we could afford. However, we’ve been screwed by this horrible credit-run. I know my credit, which was perfect, is now far from.  So my grandma gave us the money to pay off everything in one go, and we will be paying her back interest-free. A very good deal. I was hesititant to ask, as I am a rather proud little girl. My pride has gotten me into some really unfortunate situations (mostly regarding money) and so I am trying to look at this as objectively as possible. Without having to spend 90% of my paycheck on credit card bills, this week I was able to put some money into savings, pay off our remaining bills, and still have a small cushion left in checking. It feels good.