Sunday, December 28, 2008

A Binge Before the Purge

I have a bit of work to do on my first resolution, but I think the other 2 are complete and ready for posting on January 1st. Also to do on January 1st: Watch the Spartans in the CapitalOne Bowl. It starts as I get out of work. Yea!

As a kind of last hurrah before the New Year I've been eating crap (Taco Bell, large complicated sushi rolls, biscuits and gravy) and drinking Pepsi. Pepsi makes me tired. Very tired. Today I did clean up the studio and restart my carving, from scratch. One more night of Taco Bell, mmm, mmm, good.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Prelude to the Resolutions.

I've added melatonin to my sleep routine, in the effort to develop a sleep routine, or as my sister describes it, good sleep hygiene. As a result I fall asleep a little quicker, and sleep REALLY well, and even wake up earlier, but not more willing to get out of bed. It would be completely wonderful if I wanted to get out of bed, all refreshed and anxious to get started with my day, but that only happens on my days off. My bed is super comfortable. Warm and toasty and cuddly, and the house is super cold.

Since I moved into the house, I've been having crazy vivid dreams. People, places, things, all very detailed, with intricate, intricate plot lines. I have crazier dreams when I have a glass of wine before bed, and with the melatonin, the wine isn't necessary. My day is often determined by the dreams I have the night before. My mood, my attitude, how I approach work, people I meet or work with, all affected by the quality of my dream.

My dreams would be better if my ex-boyfriend would stay out of them.

The melatonin and better sleep hygiene are part of a larger plan. Overall, I'm not completely happy. I stayed in Oregon after being laid off 2 Januaries in a row for what became the wrong reasons (outlined in lesson 1), and now I'm here, and I'm not certain I know what I want. I know what I have going now is not it. I deserve better.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Lesson #2

There's a new cliche about how the Declaration of Independence promises life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but there is no promise of happiness, just the opprotunity to chase it. When I was younger I pushed to achieve certain things, because that is what I thought was expected of me, and I thought life was short, which it might be. I focused on worldly accomplishments, rather than living, and failed to appreciate the experiences laid before me.

I've learned there is no deadline for happiness.
I don't need to complete a list of tasks to achieve happiness.
Completing the list will not make me happy.
There is no guarantee for happiness.
Enjoy the pursuit of happiness, because the goal is undefined.

I'm not saying neglect all the things in your life you don't enjoy, like laundry, or piddly little tasks at work. If you don't do those things, they will weigh on you like the handicaps of Harrison Bergeron, limiting your enjoyment of the good stuff.

I've been told repeatedly this last year, I'm just a puppy, I'm still young, I have time to figure out what I want to do with my life, I don't need to DO anything but take care of my responsibilities and there is no deadline for happiness.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

I'm not cool

with the new nursing home rating system. I know I work at one of the best facilities in the state, and the one across town smells like PEE! but they had a better rating than we did. They also hadn't been audited since 2007, soooo it's an inaccurate rating system. (& I know that I may be saying that to make myself feel better.)

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,
I tried to be good this year. Please send me a nice guy and a pay raise. If you can't swing those, lets work on world peace and ending poverty. I'll try to be good again this year.
Sincerely, Katie

Monday, December 15, 2008

Lesson #1

I'm posting my lessons from this year, before I post my resolutions. No, I'm not too pretentious or lazy for resolutions. This isn't the most important lesson, but it's the most obvious, and the one I need to remember everytime I go to the bar.

If the relationship has any negative connotation within the first month or so, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he shoves you, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he yells at you, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he won't get up and take you to urgent care when you have a potentially deadly infection, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he slurs and can't complete a sentance fragment, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he drinks and doesn't come home at a reasonable time (we're talking after 2:30 am), leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.
If he doesn't love your cat, or at least fake loving your cat, leave. Walk away. Don't look back. Delete his number.

You don't need someone to be miserable with.

ugh

i don't even remember what I promised to get done last time.
I have 1/6 of the carving that needs to get done complete, and the easy (or hard, depending on perspective) part at that, and my tools need sharpening.
I'm not in the mood/drunk enough to paint and that isn't a priority until after the holidays.
Call the camera place... to do yet.
Sleep some more. Top of the list.
Stalk the hottest man in Roseburg. Very high on the list.
Make it through the holiday season, right above stalking.
Remain sober until New Year's eve... toughie.
Start working on New Year's resolution... meh. I got the weight loss goals mapped out, thanks to the fact my friend Sarah looks HOT. A little shout out to Sarah for doing such a great job.
Finish Christmas/Birthday Shopping.
Finish making lotions and body scrubs and writing addresses on Christmas card envelopes. And put everything in the mail.
Oh, and hunt down that package that is supposed to arrive today, but may not because it has the wrong address on it, because my mom doesn't keep my address on hand. I'm bitter.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Coming soon:

  1. 2 finished pieces of original work. I started a draft for one, that will be my dad's christmas present, adjusted to fit his new office, with prints available @ my esty shop. The other is a half finished painting I just need to get drunk and finish.
  2. My artwork will be (should be) for sale at a local shop come sometime next week. I'll be tweaking the prices a bit to adjust for the frame and finishing, and I'll repost the prints @ my etsy shop, with a link here.
  3. A 2008 lessons learned list. HERE. A result of a crappy first week in December.
  4. I'll call Fuji tomorrow to see about getting my camera fixed, and will proceed to photograph/journal map as much of Roseburg as I can find.

So, yeah,

I totally intended to walk, and take pictures and post and write today. But my camera is broken. Yeah. Great timing as I'm enrolled in the photography class at UCC. Sweet. So I may have to change to the basic design class, if the cost of repair is too high. Yeah, fun.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Granholm's an Idiot

Granholm, governor of my home-state, has every student on a college preparatory track? What? Really? Who's dumb ass idea was that?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

walking tour


View Larger Map
so, ill add pictures at a later date, when walk the route again, and will add them to the google map and pin point the places where the pictures were taken, and which direction I was facing.
starting at fred meyers, walk east to Stephens/99. You'll go past the northern entrance to the VA, the Roseburg HQ for the BLM and over I-5 on the Garden Valley overpass. Pretty freaky. A bunch of other businesses.
At Stephens/99 keep walking east, past the new Walgreen's and Coastal, where it wraps past Oak Park and transitions into Lincoln. UP the hill on Lincoln. My car groans on Lincoln, and so do I. Going down the hill you pass Grace Family Center. Keep walking past Klamath, past the apartment complex managed by RAP. Lincoln curves into Wright, then cross over Winchester, and walk down past DQ to the Taco Del Mar, and take a right at Rowe Street, and walk under the bridge. Really, under the bridge, past the homeless people. Then follow the trail along side the river till you reach the I-5, and this time you go under the I-5. There's a pedestrian bridge under the I-5. I never suspected. Very excited, now I can walk to work in the summer, or get a bike, and ride! On the other side of under the bridge you reach the trail that goes through Stewart Park and the disc golf course. This wraps all the way around to the wetlands beside Fred Meyer, and we're at the begining again.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

congratulations

to all of you who didn't eat to much and had a fabulous time with friends or family and aren't left at home watching depressing war movies. I ate too much, I didn't spend it with family and I hate war movies, especially with chubby baby faced actors.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

It's weird seeing Queen Latifah rap again.

I just finished my second batch of soap, after trying to melt down the first batch. The second batch, I beleive, was more sucessful, but there's no guarentee. Now to start work making lotion bars and body scrubs. I think I really did take off my fingerprints with the lye this time, as I spilled 1/2 the batch over the countertop.
Not that I've been consistant with blogging, but I'll be less consistant as I have 3-4 more shifts at work in the evening. Sleep and work, sleep and work.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hello Blog.

it's been a long time. I've got my recipes for soap ready, a lotion recipe, and a scrub recipe. Now I need $$ and to get my shit together so I can get my dad's present done too! The brother in law and hope to be future brother in law's present is well underway too. I've done decent on the diet too, and turns out I really like curry. Work blows, need to keep plugging away on those applications for OSU so I can blow this joint.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Very Productive Weekend!

There's still one day left.

I spent all day saturday wandering through all the second hand stores in Roseburg. I found some good alternate gifts, if the soap making doesn't work out. There's some good birthday gift ideas on the sideline now. I also found 100% lye for soap making.

I got roped into a birthday dinner at a chain restaurants with balloons and brightly colored blended drinks. The restaurant has those, not the birthday girl. We drank beer. Like adults. Lonely single adults. In a restaurant where I ran into the woman I thought was going to be my sister-in-law. With her adorable children I haven't seen in a while, who used to crawl in my lap and tell me stories.

First bar, was fine, trying to catch the score from the football game. Second bar, huge urge to drink and text/dial. Made it to the third bar, and had fun, forgot the urge to drink and dial.

Today there was no hangover (thank you gin) and a very clean kitchen after church. That's right, I went to church, because over dinner Sarah surprised me with "we should go to church". I'm never one to tell people they shouldn't go to church, so I agreed, given we went to the church I chose. She wants to go to meet nice men. I argued we're going to find peace with God.
She texted this morning, her eye was swollen shut, she wasn't going. So I went by myself. It was horrible. I was looking at the clock after twenty minutes of the opening worship. The band was musically talented, but lifeless, minus the token enthusiastic woman, saying "Yes Lord" into the microphone during prayer. The preacher was decent, but there was no connection for me.

So I cleaned the kitchen. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. We'll try the church thing again next week. Maybe I'll vacuum the couch and scrub the ceiling if it doesn't go well.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

A nice HOT shower

What I wouldn't give for a HOT Pressurized shower, the kind that leaves scalding bruises. I can feel the presence of knots in my shoulders right beside my neck. If I were to receive a deep shoulder rub my knees would give out.

Yeah...

I'm not walking today. Tomorrow. Promise.

Headache caused by the childish behavior and griping at work (I wish I could say I worked in an elementary school, or any school for that matter, but alas). I feel less bad about applying for the position in Corvallis. Gritting my teeth and fighting headaches every week isn't healthy.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

No one reads this...

...which isn't surprising, because it's 5 days old and I don't plan to tell anyone about it. So I can announce that I'm applying for a job in Corvallis, confident no one from work will see it. A good thing to do when you leave work at in the afternoon and dread arriving the next day. At the same time I'm also looking at classes for next semester. I gotta do something. Tomorrow, if the temperature is above 50, I will go for a walk with the camera. I am accountable to you empty blogosphere. I intended to do so today, but I hadn't eaten yet, and when I got home from work I ate and slept for 3 hours. Bad habit. So in between work and work I will go for a walk. The forecast is favorable.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

3rd Time is a Charm

So, Halloween, I broke it off with a guy I'd been seeing. I was hoping to never hear from him, but I have a constant reminder in the form of a steak knife in the dishwasher, left over from a camping trip. Last night I was woken up 3 times by text messages from this guy. 1st about how wonderful I am, he's sorry, wishing me well. 2nd reassuring me he wasn't suicidal, after i forgave him and asked if he was suicidal 3rd asking me to watch a movie. I only responded to the first 2, but I'd like to get rid of the steak knife. If it was his I'd just throw it out, but it belongs to his sister in law.
My boss just wants me to be sure I don't go back to this guy.
The reason for breaking it off doesn't matter, but after I did, I was relieved to have a reason to end it with him, because the more I thought about it, the more he was not the man I wanted to spend my life with, or my time. I shouldn't be afraid to do that sooner in the future. In retrospect, I should have been willing to do that with Brian without looking back when he didn't take me to the doctor when I had a horrible infection and surgery 2 months after we started dating. I didn't because I had just been laid off. But that should have been a clue he wasn't what I wanted. And that should be a constant reminder that I'm better off without him.
I tell myself the thing that really bothers me is that he traded down shortly after we ended things, for a grungy emo divorced baby mama, who, when I saw her last summer, at the time they started dating, looked 6 months pregnant. If it was his child, he cheated on me. If it wasn't why would you date a pregnant woman? If she wasn't pregnant, why did she look that way?
In the beginning of 2008 I thought this year had to be better than 2007, but I think I was wrong, very wrong. I'm not even attempting dating a 3rd man within this year, and if I do I'm not going to be afraid to walk away if I think it's in my best interest.

Why

Watching Ted Turner on David Letterman, I've reached the conclusion I would be more likely to vote for Ted Turner than John McCain. Age difference, one year. Hey, look, not all old guys are slimy! Thanks Ted, I feel better about your generation. And I love sailing too.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Didn't need the wine tonight

So did the dumb thing, and stayed up til 4am watching movies (2/3 I'd already seen, and Family Guy Star Wars, didn't need to see that again) and slept til noon. Then showered, got out of the shower and realized I hadn't washed my hair or scrubbed my body. I couldn't remember what I had done in the shower. But I was dressed and ready to go when Sarah arrived, but I forgot my camera so I could take a picture of Brix 527. So I'm going to hold off on writing about the place of the week until next week. By the time I got home, I was ready for a nap, which I tried to do in front of the TV, but ended up upstairs, sleeping 3 hours.

And in that 3 hours I had crazy dreams. About the ex, breaking into his apartment, and cleaning, and cooking, and taking care of things with my current roommate and random people from the bar that I didn't even talk to at the bar. And it wasn't really even his apartment, it was a dirty dingy version of my first apartment in this town. Why was I cleaning, why was Joe cooking? And the crazy bar people? They were the druggie friends of Brian's new girlfriend. All I was worried about was making the place better for Brian's daughter, and sneaking out of there. 6 months later, a year after the start of the breakdown, and I'm still concerned with the well being of his daughter, I still feel like I should be there to protect her from dirty dishes and dirty sheets, and cluttered living rooms, and inappropriate house guests. It's less than a month to her birthday, and I need to find a suitable present to drop off with her great aunt.
The whole thing/dream/situation/heartbreak is a little effed up.

So big question before I go back to work in the morning: was my weekend productive in any way? I baked cookies, bought highlighters for work, aided my supervisor over the phone, did a little homework, and napped. If I'm really good, I can get my rooms cleaned and vacuumed before Conan. Let's hope.

Those Ah-carumba Moments

When your fuming, frustrated, on the verge of tears, and you want to scream and yell, and talk about it, and when you have the chance, you can't say it. It only adds to your frustration and dissipates your passion at the same time. If you can't articulate it can you really feel it? That's not a fair question to ask, considering my clientele. But I think that's the point when people start to lose themselves, the inability to express their anger (or joy) isolates them, and their spirit dies a little.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Denver

Right now, I’m missing being in Denver. I don’t actually like Denver, as a concept, yuppies, and planning commissioners that contribute to the downfall of the housing market, and countless Targets and Walmarts and box stores all in the row.
Maybe I’m missing a making money, but not the job, and friends ready to go out at a drop of the hat, and crazy boutiques and vintage stores, and a lively nightlife, and good restaurants and interesting people. I could have those things here if I went out more.
I found Kruse farms 2 weeks ago, conveniently closer than Brosi, and the smell alone was enough to make me smile and not want to leave. It’s not the Cherry Creek Shopping District, or Sunflower Markets, or the Vance Kirkland Museum, but I was happy in Roseburg. I should go out once a week and find a new wonderful place nearby and write about it here. With a picture. Tomorrow morning coffee shop/breakfast place of preference.

Harsh

Harsh

I’ve wasted an entire Sunday reading, when I could be writing, drawing, painting, walking, exercising, taking care of homework, job hunting, a thousand productive things. Spending a day this way often ends with disappointment in myself for not doing anything listed above. Today’s disappointment was also fueled by a realization that I’m ready to admit I want to be a wife and mother.

Hello World, my name is Katie and I want to be a mommy.

Oops. Just spilled my guts in the first post of a new blog. Hello reoccurring theme.

Yes, world I know the proper and productive and healthy thing to do is to occupy myself with productive activities that make me feel fulfilled, so I don’t focus on my lack of spousal/father prospects. Writing about this subject doesn’t qualify as one of those activities.

Learning to knit socks, going down to the local ______ Club to apply to volunteer, and hopping on the excercise machine for a couple hours in front of the TV tonight, going for coffee tomorrow morning with friend Sarah, all very productive. Stop by the library. Also productive.

I should finish the afghan, scarf and handbag before I start the socks. I just threw socks out there because my feet are cold. My feet are cold because I’m not wearing socks, and the roommate likes the house cold, and doesn’t like paying the heating bills.

More on that later.