How did I manage to do that?

So CVS had an awesome sale on Coke products (4 twelve pack cases for $10) along with a spend $30 on specially marked items and you'll get $10 CVS Cash to spend in the store. Mom leveraged this deal into a lot of Coke products. I saw that many things on my shopping list were some of their specially marked items, especially make-up, so I made it my first stop on my shopping trip yesterday.

Why did make-up end up on the list since I don't subscribe to the must wear it every day or there is something wrong with you beauty culture? I do managed to put away my insecurities about how I'm turning myself into a clown with it for special occasions and sometimes those special occasions are just so my mother doesn't bitch about it. I wore make-up to the dinner theater event with Sha-Na-Na last weekend at IP Casino and the lipstick wasn't working right. It finally slid on after generous use of Chap Stick. "How old is it?" Mom asked. Turns out, I bought it when I moved back home from Natchitoches in 2000. So yeah, time for a new tube of lipstick.

Where my title comes from is going into CVS, picking up stuff that was on my shopping list (so I really can't blame it on impulse buys), and surprise at the register: $107! "How did I do that?" Needless to say, I earned the $10 CVS Cash and spent it on more Diet Dr. Pepper and Sprite Zeros (wiping out the store of both and the store was already out of regular Cokes when I got there). So my grocery spending next month will have to reigned in, but if I ration right—which I should do so I won't miss out on sleep—I shouldn't have to buy soft drinks until April.

We made it to IP Casino just in time for the show, which was awesome! The only bad thing was feeling so rushed because there was no buffer in the schedule. The next Friday night show we go to, I'll be sure not to schedule a meeting after work the same day. The only bad thing about the trip was my papers picking up second-hand smoke.

Money matters: The meeting was good, so there was no reason for me to be so nervous about the outcome. My homework assignment this month is to find a contractor to give me a pro bono quote on how much the house renovation may run and to apply any tax refunds to my debts. The hold up: my family doesn't know any contractors.

The online calculator I found made the whole thing sound so out of reach, and I'm not even planning anything massive.

This is what I've come up with this go around. The wall between the kitchen and office that also separates the bedroom and bathroom is the end of the original house. This plan means tearing off the addition that contains my now kitchen and back bedroom and building on a larger kitchen, a master bedroom with en suite bathroom and a closet, a laundry/mudroom with a walk-in pantry, and extending the roof to cover where I park my car. My living room and office remain the same with a few minor tweaks. I want to a built-in desk in my office and I'm leaning toward re-purposing the old kitchen cabinets for that. The bedroom I sleep in now (top right corner) will become a guest bedroom. The current bathroom's plumbing will be fixed to code (real bathtub faucet, real shower installed, NO MORE HOSE FAUCETS) even though I'm planning on reusing most of the fixtures. The toilet is only a few years old and the bathtub is enamel-covered cast iron. I'd rather keep using it than tear an outer wall down to get it out. The roof needs to be replaced and Dad pointed out from this image the roof profile will probably need to be changed all together. Since I know the house will have to be recovered in new siding and I'd love to have more insulation along with central AC and heat, the idea of changing the roof didn't faze me. Considering how well I usually handle the idea of change and how I have waffled about what to do to my house to make it better, Dad was probably expecting this:

Instead, I was like this:

Totally not the end of the world.

Off to my friends this weekend, and a one-shot D&D game is in the plans. I'm thinking of actually not playing a ranger. :D

Read Free!
The BookWorm

So About This Week

So I made a new item for the checklist; Friday is blog post day. And today is the first day I have been able to fulfill it. *Sigh* The goal is to be more communicative than last year. Beating forty-nine posts isn't that hard, but I'm already off to a less than stellar start.

No guilt. Okay, so what's been going on in the past two weeks?

My grandmother was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 3rd, and is in therapy at the nursing home because she had been flat on her back for two months at the hospital and they expected her to get right back in her wheel chair and go to dialysis. Mom reports that she's back to moaning and complaining about everything, so our opinion is she must be feeling better.

The sixteen straight days of rain and gloom and cold finally broke yesterday with real actual sunshine! It's still cold, but sunshine! We've missed you! So why was today this first morning I had to deal with ice on my windshield?

And I accidentally gave my parents a kitten two nights ago. I was ready for bed and shutting down the computer when I heard mewling and not in Mustard's voice. I even went so far as to look at him when I heard it again. Nope, my cat wasn't making the noise. I put my coat on over my nightgown and headed outside and called out. A lanky cat just out of kitten-hood but not fully adult sped out from under my house and immediately twined around my legs. Practically skin and bones when I picked him up and it head butts my chin and being that night was predicted to be one of the colder nights of the year, I brought it inside.

Mustard went into grumpy old man mode with bouts of crazy dervish. The kitten, white with splotches of orange stripes, didn't do anything to antagonize Mustard, but rather "hi, big cat" and found the food bowl and inhaled what was left in it. So my theory veered to lost or dumped; the kitten was too used to people and other cats.

So I called Mom to see if she heard of anyone losing their cat or wanted one. She heard Mustard's growling in the background and offered to take the kitten to her house. Mustard finally stopped chasing his own tail and growling when I threatened to lock him in his cat carrier and put it in the bathroom so I could get some sleep. The kitten's still at my parents and doesn't belong to anyone in the neighborhood. My mother's not a cat person. She tolerated the ones we had when we were kids because a) they lived outside and b) we loved them to pieces. She has no idea what to do with this kitten that just wants to rub your legs all day long.

Haven's last two episodes finally aired last night. My reaction:

combined with "Thank the Powers That Be we are getting another season!" If we hadn't, I would have to go find the writers/producers and demand answers from them.

Diary of a Gold Digger requested that we loyal readers pass out a shout out to her blog, so it will eventually lead to a book deal. I enjoy train wrecks of family relationships (remember I call those others that have a genetic tie to my nuclear family the "Extendeds" for many good reasons), so you guys might like it too.

I ran across this article: Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year, and feels like it makes sense. Much of my habit changing habits never get a chance to stick, but the inner chorus/monkey mind (that is a great term the Buddhists use, must remember to use it more often) starts in on the "how I'm such an awful failure of a person to even try" tape until I give up or just avoid whatever made them hit play. This belief needs to die a horribly fiery death, and be replaced with something else.

Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps.

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Based on my goals for 2013,

• I am a person who exercises every day and avoids process foods about 80% of the time.
• I am a person who manages money well to maintain a lovely home that is welcoming to friends and family.
• I am an indie-published author.

Now it's time to start scoring small wins, so I can feel like this:

Weekend plans: Mom hasn't had a break since we got back from Texas for Thanksgiving, so we're going for a girls' weekend at the IP Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi tonight. Vicki Lawrence is doing her stage act there tonight and Mom had free tickets. Now, I'm too young to have watched the Carol Burnett Show (but she will always be Miss Hannigan to me) regularly, but me and my sisters loved Mama's Family. They were Southern and just as dysfunctional as our own; what's not to love? That's what I'm looking forward to while Mom gambles responsibly.

The only wrinkle is I have to meet with my CCFairy after work and find out if I have any hope of remodeling the house or if I will just get to pay off bills. Yeah, I'm a little nervous about this step and trying not to think too hard about it.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Read Free!
The BookWorm

2012 Reflections and 2013 Goals

Thanks everyone for the well wishes for my family. My grandmother is hanging on a bit better, though her doctor suspects a fractured bone in her leg that is the reason why it remains swollen. She's been on bed rest for almost a month and it shouldn't look that bad with as much fluid as they pull off of her.

Uncle Scott coaxed some more life out of the washing machine, so I've taken that appliance off the shopping list for now. Mom got hit with a nasty virus at Christmas, then Uncle Scott, and Friday I thought I was getting it. Turned out all I got was mucus-production overdrive in the sinuses. Just enough to make you feel like drilling a hole in your head will help, but no fever or actual impairment. At the same time, it sucks all desire to actually do anything.

So instead of going through my 2012 Goals and pointing out how I failed the big fat failure for another year while I'm hydrating my body, I'm letting Least I Could Do sum up the year for me:

(Apparently, sinus pressure and going slightly dehydrated makes me crankier on myself.)

There, done, clean slate time and be realistic about what you can accomplish.

Rewards for the daily chores I loathe utterly does work, but I need to schedule in time to spend the rewards. Yearly goals fall apart at some point in the summer. And I don't track or put off tracking.

I declare 2013 the year I give myself LESS to do. But the less are doozies, so who knows if this will make me less crazy. The yearly goals:

• Lose weight
• Remodel house
• Self-publish an e-book

And that's it. Thank goodness I have all year, right?

I thought about breaking it down to quarterly goals, but I think monthly will be easier to concentrate on. Then all I have to do is to remember to set those up every month.

January Boulders

• Exercise 30 days in a row
• Cut out grains as much as possible
• CCFairy's homework is due Jan. 18th
• Finish all alien languages for Stellar Gift of Death
• Write 20 days on Forget the Sun

Yeah, I'm building in some slack time, because I will take it and then get on the guilt train for doing it. Enough of that crap. This year I will not be taking that train, at least not as long as I have before.

Read Free!
The BookWorm