Having gotten rather heavier than I ever imagined was possible for me (since I was spoiled by my high metabolism for the first 30-some years of my life), I always resisted “diets” because they don’t let you eat. I am NOT okay with being hungry. EVER.

But when my weight hit the same poundage that it was when I was 9 months pregnant, I cringed. When it hit the 200-pound mark, I cried. When it hit 220, I nearly fainted. (I’m a bit below that now.) My doctor has been pushing me to lose weight, my feet hurt ALL the time (I have early-stage plantar fasciitis), I can’t walk for very long and I can’t run at all (shin splints), and I have been extremely resentful of my body for a couple of years now. I knew I needed to do something — but I can’t deal with HUNGER!

Then I heard about the Dukan diet. You don’t have to count calories. You don’t have to count carbs. You don’t have to count “points” or portion sizes or any of that nonsense. You don’t have to be hungry, ever. You can eat as much as you want!!!

And now for something completely TMI…

So I got this book, and combined with the amazing inheritance of canning jars I received a few weeks back, I now have the beginnings of a pantry full of easy-to-make dinners in jars. Today I made 2 each of 5 recipes from the book, following a trip to Winco yesterday in which I scored oodles of bulk foods and inexpensive spices. (Your whole world opens up when you start experimenting with spices. I’m rather appalled now, that I was well into my thirties before I discovered this. I blame my sheltered-in-all-the-wrong-ways upbringing.) Winco even has TVP in their bulk foods bins!

My garden is actually growing stuff! I will be having a nice 3-day weekend this coming Memorial Day weekend; I’m planning on getting some tomato seedlings planted. Most of the seeds I planted directly seems to be doing very well. The spinach is coming up nicely, as are some of the lettuce varieties I planted, and the potato & pea plants are starting to grow like crazy!

The flip side is that almost all the seedlings that I started inside have suffered badly after transplanting. I’ll just keep researching, and doing my best to apply what I learn. I did get some strawberry plants from my late grandmother’s garden, and today I noticed an actual strawberry is growing! I wasn’t sure they would set fruit after being dug out of the ground and put in a planter, but they seem to be just fine.

But most of my weekend will be spent (hopefully!) enjoying the company of my husband, who will be starting his “2 weeks in the summer” part of Naval Reserves duty as of June 1st. I need to get a bunch of cleaning & organizing done too… there are lots of ideas and plans percolating in my head regarding that. [insert maniacal laughter here]

As of last weekend, we are minus one reptile buddy. Nobody died, but unfortunately as Sebastian grew up she became the unfriendliest of kingsnakes (as in “aggressively striking and biting at the slightest movement, and absolutely refusing to let go once she sank her teeth into you”), and after much contemplation, Anxiety (aka Baby, as she’s more often called at home these days) decided to let the pet store where we got her find a new home for the little biting fiend.

I profoundly wish I could take an actual vacation. The last couple of times I took a few days off from work, I did a bunch of housework but didn’t get as much accomplished as planned, since I was unfortunately felled by migraines. (It seems that I get migraines more often than not on my days off — how terribly perverse!) But I’m really, really, really freaking tired these days. And it’s not from lack of sleep… I only have part of a clue as to the reasons why, and no real handle on potential solutions. I think sometimes you just have to resign yourself to less-than-optimum circumstances until other opportunities present themselves. And at the moment, just getting one foot in front of the other is about all I can handle without imploding.

Two and a half hours of frustration (mostly spent being pissed as a sudoku) on the Dropquest 2011 earned me an extra 1GB of space in my Dropbox free. Yay!

Final page told me:

You placed #5363 with a time of 02:38:50
Your achievement’s been immortalized on the Dropquest Wall of Fame!

(I felt bad about being #5363 until I discovered that the winner only completed it in 2 hours. Then I wasn’t so bummed.)

It wasn’t easy. I earned that adorable knight-defeating-dragon drawing on the last page!

Of course I fraking cheatedtook advantage of helpful souls online providing answersclues. Duh.

There may be an actual “2010 summary-type post.” Maybe. Right now all I can say is… it’s been a helluva year. Currently I’m looking forward to the vacation time I have scheduled at the end of January, during which will occur less “relaxation” and more “kicking ass on organizing & cleaning the damned house.” (Four adults living in a 2-bedroom condo with inadequate closet space makes for a very cluttered and rather chaotic living situation.)

Here’s a little food for thought about a hobby. The comments are as worthwhile to read as the blog post is.

For a bit lighter fare, check out another, somewhat more amusing, hobby.

People who don’t think that wildlife lives in the city aren’t paying attention. I’ve always noticed animals, because I really love them (and not just for eating, although I have no problem with that either). But since I read this really awesome book called Coyote at the Kitchen Door (I loved it so much that I sent a copy to Geoffrey when he was at Hospital Corps School), I’ve been noticing urban wildlife a lot more.

At the old place in SE Portland, I took pics of the raccoons that lived in the next yard over, kept the squirrel feeder pretty well stocked, and was always delighted to see the odd possum wandering through the yard. (I was less delighted to see the rats that frequently traversed the top of the chain-link fence that marked the boundary of the high school track right next door, but rats are pests. Or food for my snakes.) I tried putting up a suet bird feeder, but didn’t seem to get much traffic…perhaps it was too well-camouflaged by the trees. Or perhaps the cats frequently squirrel-gazing at the back door spooked them away.

Since moving to Beaverton a little over a year ago, I’ve seen a lot less urban wildlife close to home, but a lot more variety of it. Not long after we moved, I saw a coyote near the 217 freeway exit — the first one I’ve ever seen outside a zoo! A couple months ago, I saw a really huge raccoon a couple miles from home, and less than a month ago I encountered a pair of deer just a block from the Costco on my way to work one night!

I’ve been working the graveyard shift since August, and I’ve seen a lot more wildlife in downtown Portland, too. In the last month alone, I’ve seen 2 raccoons (one right across the street from my work building!), and both a Norway rat & a field mouse (on different nights) running along the wall of the Post Office near Portland State University. I guess the many parks and decorative water fountains in downtown Portland would help city critters thrive quite well.

It’s going to be tons of fun watching for critters when I actually move out to a truly rural homestead. Especially if we do wind up in Alaska, and there are potentially moose and bears strolling through the yard! *squee!*

(If the bar is red, I’m behind schedule. If it’s green, I’m on pace. If it’s another color, I won!)

It’s my weekend, the demonspawn who still lives at home is away for the weekend doing the RHPS thing in Lincoln City (the Oregon Coast in October… brrrr!), I woke with the migraine that began yesterday morning at about 5am and toradol & caffeine hasn’t fixed it so I will have to break out the big guns (sumatriptan), and I’m supposed to go to a party tonight.

I haven’t been to a party in forever. (Okay, not forever literally. But several years.) The last Halloween party I attended (back when I was still thin enough to dress as Britney Spears in her schoolgirl outfit from the “One More Time” video, and get appreciative whistles!) was hosted by the delightful Molly, and somehow I wound up being bodily thrown over a guy’s shoulder just before he ran down a hallway, giving everyone at the party the knowledge that I wear thong panties. And I wasn’t even drunk!

Lacking a costume, I figured I will just wear whatever I can find that will show off my legs, my favorite pair of boots (with heels that should put me at about 6 feet in height), and hope for the best. Anxiety suggested I put glitter on my face and go as a sparkle-pire, but I’m not so fond of raver scabies that I want to be shedding it for days on end, even after repeated showers.

I was going to darn the unfortunate hole in my expensive-but-wonderful black tights, until I realized it would be quicker & easier to run down to the store and pick up a cheap pair. (I will darn the tights soon, because they are way too awesome to toss out. Just not today.) Perhaps I will find a blouse I can’t resist, since my current choices are less than thrilling.

It doesn’t sound like I’m excited about this party, does it? I am, really. It’s just that… Okay, I admit it: I’m nervous. I often don’t play well with others outside my immediate social circle, and I just don’t want this to be a complete & utter disaster. Also, there could be flirting and I don’t think I’m very good at that anymore… at the least, I am woefully out of practice.

(An aside: the word “woe” always reminds me of my dear friend Tom, who lives in the wastelands of eastern Washington. Tom was into Vampire: The Masquerade long before vampires were cool or trendy; in fact, he was the Prince of Tri-Cities. Anyway, he once said something about goths that made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself. And that was: “Kids these days don’t know how to do goth properly. In my day, we had equal parts angst and woe. Nowadays, they have too much angst and not enough woe!”)

We’ll see how this works out. For now, I must swallow a pill and figure out exactly what to wear. (Eeeep!)

September was a rough month. With the exception of getting to see Geoffrey for 4 days, it rather sucked. Here’s why:

I had some seriously mixed feelings about my baby turning 18 — which, of course, happened just a month or so after I started feeling that I was getting really good at this motherhood gig! But my youngest becoming a legal adult snuck up on me out of nowhere. One minute, I’m trying to wrap my head around her getting taller than me and being old enough to get a driving permit (although she didn’t), the next she’s buying lottery tickets and opening a checking account.

Also, a few days after I got home from seeing Geoffrey, my bad tooth started hurting so much that I broke down and went back to the dentist. I didn’t have any cavities, mind you (I’m a little obsessive about brushing)! But what I did have was a tooth that was cracked all the way through, which the dentist didn’t discover for a while because the crack was hidden in the dental x-ray by a filling from childhood. Once the extent of the damage was identified, though, the tooth had to come out. Thank heaven I got a GOOD dentist, and no dry socket this time (unlike when I had three of my wisdom teeth yanked).

And to top it all off, just a couple days after my tooth was pulled (and I was easing back on the Vicodin… sweet, sweet Vicodin), everyone in the house came down with a nasty cold and a half. I say “and a half” because most of the time colds start with sniffles & stuffy and/or runny nose, then move down into a sore throat and eventually a chesty cough. This one started out with major chest congestion & cough, moved up to become a head cold with terrible sinus congestion, and then settled in for a good long run in both spots! It’s been just shy of 4 weeks since everyone in the house started coughing, and we’re all nearly better. Each of us is still plagued by the occasional coughing spell and heavy-duty sneezes. Being sick SUCKS.

That lasted clear into October, and there are moments when I still feel congested. The only time I’ve been sicker with a respiratory ailment is when I had whooping cough. At least I didn’t have a sinus infection this time! Sinus pain, I have discovered, is the slightly less-evil twin of migraine pain.

Currently I’m simply exhausted… trying to get past that with more/better sleep, take my vitamins regularly, and so on. We’ll see how things go.

I miss Geoffrey horribly. (It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to. Oh wait, I don’t cry. Never mind.)

I learned to crochet in 1989, when I was a new mom of a breastfed baby and sometimes needed a hobby other than reading to occupy my mind while feeding her. I was young and poor, so the only crochet patterns I could get my hands on were from library books and the old crocheting magazines my mom would find at yard sales for a dime or a quarter each (which was also where I got most of my yarn). It never occurred to me that someday I would own dozens of crochet pattern books, and have access to literally thousands of free crochet patterns on something called the World Wide Web (which was just being invented, and I wouldn’t know about it for several years yet).

It’s ridiculously easy to find free patterns, on such wondrous sites as Ravelry, Lion Brand Yarn, Caron, Coats & Clark, Bernat, and Lily Sugar ‘n Cream. I have quite the collection. Plus I subscribe to Crochet! Magazine and Crochet Today, and regularly pick up copies of Interweave Crochet as well — all of which are neatly saved in magazine holders. It’s an embarrassment of riches, which my children will one day have to sort through (unless I’m lucky enough to eventually have a crocheting grandchild, in which case he or she will inherit whatever Lyse’s willing to part with).

We won’t even get into the size and variety of my yarn stash. I’d say it’s fair to call me a yarnaholic, and leave it at that.

So… the problem I’m having now is that I’m a bit overwhelmed with questions like: What project do I want to start next? What pattern should I use? What color yarn? What kind of yarn?

It’s almost enough to make me finish all the WIPs that sit in my project baskets, taunting me.

Almost.

Gee, my weekend is starting swimmingly. One of the graveyard ladies called out, and I was on call, so I get to work overtime. I’ve been on the graveyard shift temporarily for a couple of weeks to cover the shift of someone who’s out on medical leave, so at least it’s not screwing up my sleep schedule, but it does shorten my weekend quite a bit. And I really, really needed this weekend.

Of course the first phone call tonight was from Jane Q. Stupid, whose child has been running a fever of 104* for over 24 hours, asking if she should bring her child into the emergency department. As I like having a job, my reply had to be the official statement of, “I can’t answer that since I’m not medically trained.” Given my druthers, I would have replied, “What you should have done is called the clinic when they were open today instead of waiting until midnight on Friday, but since you clearly had better things to do than adequately parent your child, let me page the doctor on call, and she will tell you to get off your ass and drive your kid to the ER already.”

It was also quite exciting to read the THREE emails in my work inbox advising of problem callers who require “special handling” (i.e. connect them straight to the Security office — and yes, you can be banned from calling a hospital if you create a prior pattern of harrassment). One of them is living proof that the Universe occasionally does have a sense of humor, as the guy’s name actually has the initials “B.S.”

To put the sprinkles on the sundae, one of the most-frequently paged departments had nobody listed as being on call, and that got a certain neurosurgeon a bit peeved with me, despite it being the fault of that department’s scheduler and not anyone in my department. To his credit, though, when I did track down the correct person and corrected the on call schedule, that neurosurgeon actually thanked me. In case you’ve never had to deal with a neurosurgeon before, let me assure you that being thanked by one is shockingly rare. Most surgeons really are the temperamental, arrogant bastards that TV dramas portray them as being, and neurosurgeons are usually the worst.

At least I only have to work 6.5 or 7 hours (depending on how many of the early day shift people show up in the morning). My plans at that point will be to drive the younger demonspawn to her first day at her first “real” (requiring a W-4 Form) job at the Bipartisan Cafe (I promised I’d drive her in before I found out I’d be working tonight), and then go home to hopefully achieve something in the vicinity of 8 hours’ sleep. However, for that to be a realistic goal, I’ll probably have to lock the cats out of my room!

I may spend all the overtime money on yarn, since good yarn is not cheap — and since Jo-Ann was evil and sent me a 2-day-only coupon good for 80% off one item. The coupon is valid on the weekend I get my next paycheck. Those bitches.

But yarn is a pretty decent reward for nights like tonight.