Taking out the trash

1. I have a headache. This used to be my normal state of being, but ever since I got knocked up and had Jillian, the daily headaches have gone away. I haven’t had a full-blown migraine since December 2005! But I’ve been doing a lot of reading and knitting lately so maybe that’s the culprit. I’ve also noticed that once I get past the headache stage of caffeine withdrawal, I’m fine until I have a cup of coffee and then that causes a headache. I cannot win.

2. Old friends coming out of the woodwork on Facebook. It’s interesting to interact with people I haven’t seen in years. When you fall out of touch with someone, you’re left with your last impression of them which sort of crystallizes in your mind. So to come across these people again is interesting because we all know who we think we all are, but we’ve all changed a lot and getting to know the old friends again is a lot of fun. I mean, I’ve had three different personalities (at least!) since I graduated from high school!

3. I do believe it’s going to rain from now until August. I will have to get the tomatoes in the ground at some point. I hope they survive. We had a little incident in which the seedling tray was overturned and a lot of the seedlings didn’t make it but what the hell was I going to do with 72 tomato plants anyway? I think I have about 20 good ones, and that will be more than enough.

4. The rest of the garden is looking amazing. Lettuce and spinach are up, the scallions are poking green arms out of the soil in a very tentative way, and the cucumbers are looking good. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be more successful than we have been. I have oregano and basil on the windowsill (so I don’t forget about them), and someday I’ll get around to planting my cilantro. Maybe.

5. We finally acquired a boombox for our Sirius radio. They don’t even make the unit we own anymore, so it was ebay to the rescue. For $70, we got the boombox thingy and now we can listen to the radio outside on the patio! If the rain ever stops, that is.

6. We are planning to have a yard sale in a couple of weeks. I don’t know how we’ve managed to acquire so much junk just in the 18 months since we last moved (and pitched a ton of crap then), but we’ve got quite a bit. I’ve been saving the boxes that Jillian’s diapers come in and putting her outgrown clothes in them. There were 10 of them in her closet, all packed to the gills. I hope we can sell some of it! I think I might put the couch and loveseat up for sale at the same time and see if any poor bastard wants to take them off our hands.

7. Domestic goddess alert: Jillian is testing her limits lately, and the other day this took the form of pitching a full glass of milk onto the carpet. As you can imagine, this did not make Mama happy, but in a way it totally did because we went out and bought ourselves a steam cleaner for the carpet. I call it “The Beast” and damn, if that’s not the best $250 I’ve spent lately. I figured I could buy one of these for $250 and spend a few hours every few months cleaning the carpet myself or I could spend at least $250 for Stanley Steemer or their generic local counterpart to come out and do it. Since we’ve only had the carpet cleaners here one time since we moved in, you can imagine how low on the budget list carpet cleaning ended up being. So the math approves of my steam cleaner purchase. Hell, it’s already paid for itself and I get a bit of a workout at the same time. Woo.

8. I don’t think Jillian will ever be potty-trained.

9. We are pretty much debt-free at the moment. Aside from the 8 remaining payments on our truck and my hilarious student loan payments (and the mortgage, but that’s a large enough amount of money as to be completely irrelevant), we don’t owe nobody nuthin.’ We own everything IN the house, for once. This is a good feeling to have, especially in this economic climate. So hooray for that.

10. Jillian is at the age where she blurts out horribly embarrassing things in the most charming way. Last night, we were at dinner and a really big guy walked past our table. He was really quite enormous – I believe he even had a moon or two orbiting him. Of course, Jillian The Observer said “Wow Mama – dat’s a really big guy!” Thank goodness the place was noisy enough that I don’t think anyone heard her except for us. She’s a nut.

11. Wednesday is a big day. I’m starting with a personal trainer at the gym. It’s been a long time in coming, but I finally finally finally got over myself and made the appointment. I’ve accepted that I cannot do it on my own. I can’t make myself work out every day (indeed, here I am writing this mess and there is a treadmill downstairs I should be stomping on), and I need to be held accountable to someone. So trainer it is. I think it will be good for me to have someone to push me, because god knows I won’t push myself. I’d like to lose at least 50 pounds, but the number on the scale isn’t the ultimate goal. Ideally, I want to increase my stamina and strength and if I lose 50 pounds in the process, well great. I look at myself and I don’t think I look all that fat, but then I see photographs of me and I want to vomit on them. What a good goal: “I’d like to look better in photos.” Eh, it’s better than some, I guess. I would definitely like to hate my clothes less.

12. Once I get that project going, I think I’m going to do something drastic to my hair.