BioGrandparents

So when I was very very young Mim divorced my BioDad and then a few years later married my Dad (who legally adopted us, so he isn't a stepfather, he's my Dad) and we lost contact with my BioGrandparents. A while back they tracked Kwiddens down and got in touch and started talking and such, and Kwiddens asked me if I wanted in and the whole situation seemed weird to me, and I wasn't sure, so I just sat on it for a while. Then, in November, they came to Kwiddens's wedding and I saw them for the first time in probably 20 years, and it was weird...

Anyway, some time passed and I mulled it over and decided that I would shoot them an e-mail and start getting to know them. And it's been weird, and fun, and interesting, and confusing. But the other day I got my birthday card in the mail from them and it felt...nice.

Mim's parents and my Dad's parents were just never close to us, so I kinda grew up without the grandparent experience. And when I get an e-mail from them, it's...nice. I like it. It's family I've really never known so it's so strange but I like it and am excited for when they come to Utah in August to see Kwiddens's baby. I will make sure to spend some time with them and get to know them more in person.

It's kinda like having a pen pal. Well, two pen pals and a dog named Sonny.

Birthdayness

So for birthday week there were many festivities.

Last Friday Mim took me out to Applebee's and we had tasty steak and had so much fun talking to each other. While we were there, a little girl at another nearby booth hurt her finger and it was bleeding profusely, and she was crying (and I wasn't mad because she had been behaving super well for a girl her age before she got hurt, and dude, if I were bleeding like that I probably would have cried too) and right in the middle of it she said (in the most comical but sad way possible ) "Geez Louise!!!" and Mim and I just totally lost it, and we looked over and the mother was trying so hard not to laugh. It was hilarious. And sad, because I'm not totally heartless.

So then that weekend Scott was going to take me to Red Lobster for our birthday dinner, but when we got there it was going to be like an hour wait and we were feeling particularly impatient and hungry that day, so we just went and got Chinese at our favorite place. I thought that was my birthday dinner, but on Tuesday Scott convinced me that I wanted to go to Red Lobster in the first place, so that's where we were going. And I posted about that. But I left out another funny thing: A lady came out from the kitchen to get some lobsters from the tank in the lobby, and some little kids were watching her, and she pulled out three and then asked "Would you like to say goodbye?" And I don't know why that struck me as so funny but it was awesome.

So then Thursday was the actual birthday. It was my turn to bring treats to work, so I went to Krispy Kreme. I went through the drive-thru and she took my order and then when I pulled up, she was so confused that she had to take my order again, and because of this she gave me some of the donuts for free. And she didn't even know it was my birthday! So that was some good birthday karma to start out the day.

Then at work, my coworker so astutely pointed out that we hadn't ordered pizza for lunch in a while, and what an awesome thing to do on someone's birthday, so we did, and then I finished work early and went home and took a little birthday nap!

After she got off work Kwiddens came up to take me for another birthday dinner (I'm sensing a theme here) and we went to Applebee's again and just split an appetizer so we would have room for COLD STONE OH YES. And I got some Birthday Cake Remix.

And that was the end to birthday week.

I didn't want presents from people, because I have enough stuff, and I just want to spend some quality time with people I love whom I don't get to see often. But, as per tradition, Scott got me lots of presents from my wishlist and let me order some birthday yarn.

He got me several CDs, including a Ditty Bops, an Avril Lavigne, and a Vertical Horizon, and a few movies (Never Been Kissed, Step Up, and While You Were Sleeping), and a copy of The Hitchhiker's series (and Scott's parents also got me this book, leather bound with gold embossment, really awesome), and three awesome books about knitting socks!

I ordered rainbow sock yarn, and then some pink, green, and purple yarn that all mathces so I haven't decided if I want to use it for a big something or three little somethings with the individual colors.

So the moral of the story is:

I am SO spoiled. And I am okay with it.

Dye: An Adventure

So.

I had a birthday this past week. 24!

I got some birthday money from my grandma and grandpa (there'll be a post about that) so I decided to treat myself to something fun. I've been wanting to do something cool with my hair for a while but have either been broke or too busy.

Whenever I want to get something done I go to the beauty school. It's cheaper, and the instructors are there every step of the way so you know that even if there's a mistake it will be fixed.

Which I experienced firsthand.

So last time I dyed my hair (September) I had a lighter brown on top and a much darker brown on the underside and I loved it. It was the perfect color combination for my complexion and added depth to my own, boring, mousy brown color.

So this time I decided to do the same colors but add a little zest: hot pink peekaboo panels!

I went in and my stylist's name was Amanda. Let me just say that through this entire thing she was awesome.

So I told her what I wanted and she whipped out the color book and we decided on what colors to do and everything. Then she went to get the supervisor to ok the formulas.

Now, they kept the formulas from last time on file. And they worked perfectly last time. So you would think that they would use them again. But this instructor, RUTH, was an absolute moron and told them "No, you should use this developer instead of the other one" and when they took the dye off the top my roots were ORANGE. Not like, redhead orange, but orange like the Jayne hat I made earlier.

So, at this point they had bleached the panels to put in the pink, so they decided that they would put in the pink and then re-dye the roots with the correct developer this time and fix it. So, they went back to mix the colors and they came back out...they had failed to check to make sure they still had pink. Yep, they didn't.

So, out came the color book again, and we looked at all our options, and I was very disappointed because um, hello, pink is my favorite color. But, it was already bleached and ready to go, so I just chose to do fire engine red instead. Red tends to fade more quickly than most other colors, so I figured once it faded I could reapply pink and my stylist said she would help me get a hold of the right kind of dye later, and what the heck, red is fun too.

So they put the red on and then reapplied the new, correct, dye to the roots on top. We let it process and then went to rinse it out. Immediately we could see that the red was PERFECT AND AWESOME AND WOW COOL! However...my roots were still orange. Very very orange.

So, we called yet another instructor over (we'd gone through like three) and they decided on another formula to mix up to try to fix it again. So we applied that and waited...and they were still orange.

So, another instructor came over and pow-wowed with the other one, and came up with another formula, and they put it on, and while we waited for that I put in a formal complaint to the manager that it was, in fact, an instructor that made the wrong formula in the very beginning, and she should have known better. Oh, and she was really rude to me too and that bugged me.

So then we rinsed that off and it was wet but it looked better, so we dried it...and that took a long time because my hair is very thick.

But, once it was dry, the roots were almost exactly the same color as the rest! WIN!

So anyway. That was fun. I got there at 3:45 and was there until 9:45...6 hours. But it was fun, and I was in a good mood.

My attitude was basically this: that's what you risk when you go to the beauty school to get your hair done. Someone is bound to make a mistake somewhere and as long as they are willing to fix it, I'm cool with it. The only reason I was pissed off was because it was the freaking instructor that messed it all up.

So here's a picture of the back...it's really messy because I slept on it but you can see the red peeking through. It's all around, like a halo, and when I move you can see it peek through and I LOVE IT and it actually looks redder than this:

SO rock and roll.

Anyway. So I got birthday money and I was going to have fun with it and I knew this was going to be expensive. The instructor at the beginning was going to charge me $20 for the base color, and another $6 for adding another color to the underside, and then she wanted to charge $3 per panel, and they ended up putting in 20 panels (there's a lot more red in there than it looks like in that picture) and so it was going to be about $90. And that was fine with me, because it was birthday money. BUT, when the stylist sent me up to the register to pay she wrote down that there were only 5 panels (yay! saving money!) so that was going to be only about $40. AWESOME. So I brought the formula slip up to the register and they were like "$14 please" and I was like, "Um, you didn't look at the slip, I had panels and everything" and they were like "Yeah (sneaky looks on their faces) we're having a special". The instructor that had priced it out earlier was gone so they were able to fudge it and I had like $100 worth of work done for $14.

And that's the story about my birthday hair dye.

Shrimpies Are Tasty

So tonight we went for dinner at Red Lobster. This is one of a series of birthday dinners with various members of my family (after birthday week is over I will tell everything I got and ate, etc.).

We walked in and sat down for a few minutes while they got us a table. While we were sitting there, another man across from us PUT HIS FEET ON THE TABLE. IN A RESTAURANT. Ugh.

Then, we were seated in one of those little alcoves that are really echoey. We were also seated to two different tables with SCREAMING BABIES.

Pet peeve: If your child is too young to behave and be quiet at a nice restaurant, LEAVE THE LITTLE BUGGER HOME WITH A FREAKING BABYSITTER.

So I asked to be moved (I actually can't believe I had the guts to do that!). Apparently if you ask for something early on the manager will make sure to come take special care of you and make sure you get everything you want. Awesome.

So once we were seated in a quieter place and got our food it was wonderful and relaxing and I had three kinds of shrimp.

I had been having a really bad day because I missed some meds TWICE last week and my body is still trying to balance itself again, so even though everything at work went perfectly smoothly and I had a great day, I just got home after work and felt...well, I couldn't really figure out how I felt. I felt sad, but content, but tired, but restless. I felt like I was craving something, but it wasn't food or sleep or something to do...I wanted to get out of the house and do something but at the same time I just wanted to veg in front of the TV (I'm loving Stargate all over again). I hate when I feel like this because I feel like no matter what I do I will still feel unsettled.

So, when Scott got home we decided to go out and run a bunch of errands before getting dinner and once we were out and about and getting things done I felt a bit better, and at dinner I had a daquiri so I felt a little more relaxed and hopefully tonight I will sleep better and tomorrow maybe my brain chemicals will decide to behave. Maybe.

Either way, WHO PUTS THEIR FEET ON THE TABLE AT A RESTAURANT?

It was a grown man, for crying out loud.

Gross.

Decisions, Decisions

So I've made a few decisions lately. One involving yarn and one involving food.

We'll see if they hold...

On the yarn front, I've looked through my yarn and I have quite a stash (not nearly as much as some people do, but for me this is a lot) and I think I should not buy more yarn unless 1. It is my birthday (next Thursday) or 2. I need it to make a specific project and don't have anything suitable to sub with in the stash. I know I have enough sock yarn for at least ten pairs, so that's something.

The food decision comes from my learning about myself. Over the past year and a half I have been dieting and trying to figure out why I eat the way I eat and trying desperately to eat more vegetables and less...well, less CRAP.

Aside: Something like ten years ago Mim realized she had an addiction to chocolate. She realized she was eating it all the time, and it was stressing her out that she wasn't as fit as she would like and she felt bad for eating so much of it (looking back, I can definitely say she had a problem. It wasn't like, "Oh, I shouldn't eat some chocolate every day", it was more like, "Oh, I should not eat a ten pound bag of chocolate chips"). She decided to just never eat chocolate again. And she did. Well, I mean she didn't. She went through with her decision, and she has been healthier and slimmer since. And it's amazing! She just says no and that's that.

I think I am going to take this approach with some foods. I've learned about myself that I can't portion. I like eating, and I like eating a lot. I start eating something and sometimes I can't stop myself, even if I feel sick. Something about feeling totally full makes me feel better (while feeling worse at the same time...it's complicated) and I need to get past the need to feel like that (I should probably start seeing a therapist again, but THAT'S EXPENSIVE).

So my first order of business?

I am never going to eat french fries again.

Never.

I am determined.

I think that since I usually have fries while I am eating a burger, it would he helpful for me to not eat burgers anymore either.

So, no burgers and no fries.

Eventually maybe I will add more to that list but I think this is a good starting point.

Party Buster. And Party. And Buster.

So this weekend we had my birthday party. We also had Buster groomed, which turned out to be a party buster. More about that in a second.

So I still need to get my paperwork out for the concealed carry. I had the class so the only thing left is to fill out the papers and send them in and then within two months I'll have the permit. Driving to Mim's will feel much safer since I drive through all parts of Salt Lake, including the bad ones, and past the prison, so if my car breaks down or something I won't feel totally unsafe while I wait for someone to rescue me. Hopefully by the time the permit comes my gun will be in...I called the other day to check to see if I had fallen through the cracks or if the shipment really hadn't come in yet and they told me they weren't even estimating time for customers any more because there was so much demand right now. We haven't even been able to get ammo for the Walther at Wal-Mart...that's how bad it is.

So my yarn is scheduled to come in on Friday! I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday to get yarn for this great sweater I have planned, but they didn't have the same dye lot for the yarn I wanted, and they were out of almost everything, so it was a very disappointing trip. The sweater I want to make has this stitch that I just learned:It's really pretty and has a good thickness and stretch to it, so I think working it into a sweater pattern will be adorable.

So I got a few presents for my birthday. Scott got me a lot of girlie movies I had wanted and I've watched almost all of them. Mim and Em and Jorg got me some candles and lotion and bath things what are cherry blossom and vanilla scented. I took a bath last night with them and it was so relaxing :) Scott's parents got me a set of pearl earrings that will match my pearl necklace perfectly: The necklace used to be Scott's grandma's and I inherited it when she was cleaning out her old storage unit.

Anyway, so onto the party...yeah. I had dropped Buster off at Petsmart Saturday to get a bath and have his fur trimmed since it's coming up on Spring and it's getting warm (except for this stupid coldness with the snow nast). When I dropped him off I asked for them to trim his fur down so it would be 1.5" long all over. I then went home and got everything ready for the family to come over. They got here and we started to talk and have fun and I opened presents and then Scott got a call from work and almost had to go to Idaho (he didn't end up going until yesterday, thank goodness) so he was going to go get Buster and then leave. He came home and when he got there and Buster walked in he looked awful! They SHAVED him except on his head and his tail, and he looked so STUPID. Even if that had been what I wanted they did a horrible job, since there were tufts of long hair all over and they didn't even cut his toenails and they cut skin off in a few places and hurt him and when I saw him I started crying because I was so sad and mad at the pet store. So Scott turned around and went back and demanded our money back (they had said when I dropped him off it would be $50 but they charged us $70-jerks).
So I called around and tried to find someone who could fix his hair on Sunday but everyone was full, so I had to settle for an appointment yesterday afternoon. Thankfully these guys knew what they were doing and fixed him the best they could and only charged me $30. So, I went from a beautiful fluffy dog: to this: in two days. Boo. I guess it'll grow, but I'm still mad. Scott was an absolute angel about it though, he really was my knight in shining armor. And after we were all calmed down on Saturday he made a mohawk with his freak hair and put a glow necklace on him and sent me a picture and it made me smile :) See, they even shaved his nose, which is just bizarre!

So anyway, once I was calmed down the party got started. We grilled and had cheesecake (low-carb, of course, I have to be able to eat my own birthday cake!) and played Faces and Phase 10 and Uno and watched Scrubs and Scott and Jorgen went downstairs to the "Man Cave" and played computer games while the girls crocheted and surfed the internet. Basically, it was a low key event where everyone did whatever they felt like and we all had fun. We went to bed too late and slept in too late in the morning, and Scott made us all french toast and bacon for breakfast and around 1:00 everyone went home. Good party. Except the whole Buster incident.

Anyway, this phase of the diet is so much more enjoyable, since there is such a variety of foods I can eat. Yesterday I made myself this casserole for dinner: Very colorful! Sausage and broccoli and cheese and yes, that is a Spongebob plate. Because I'm cool. I'm planning on having a huge steak tonight for dinner. Happy Day.

Next One Will Be Bigger

Just a quick note.

Last night I took the class for getting a concealed carry permit, and I will send out the paperwork and have the permit in two months! Hopefully my Bersa will have come in by then...we'll see. The instructor was the spitting image of Vernon Dursley (er, the actor who plays him, anyway). All the way down to the mustache-it was perfect!

Birthday party got moved from last weekend to this weekend, so I'll tell you how that went.

I ordered $83 of yarn from Smiley's, and at Smiley's that's a LOT of yarn. I bought some cashmere, though! Quite a splurge. There will be pictures when it comes.

I finished two baby blankets, one for Kirk and one for Andrea, and pictures of those will come soon as well, since I don't want to spoil the surprise yet ;)

Diet and a Sock

So Scott sent me flowers for Valentine's day, and I never posted the picture, so here it is:

In the middle of my very messy office. My office is much cleaner than when I inherited it, though!

I learned how to knit a sock. I found an online tutorial and I went through it step by step. It took forever because I had to frog and start over several times. Here's the process: First, you cast onto three needles instead of just one and knit in the round instead of back and forth. Harder than it sounds until you get used to it.Next step is to make the cuff then start the heel, which is really complicated especially since I'm a beginning knitter!Eventually you do a lot of magic, etc. and you have a sock. A hideous sock. But it's the most comfortable sock I've ever worn. Scott and Mim were kind enough to say it looked great, but to my perfectionist eyes, I could only see the myriad of mistakes I had made.

And, sadly (but happily at the same time-YAY WARM), winter is coming to a close. Here is a picture of a place near Mim's house with the snow:

Gorgeous. But it's ok that it's melting. Heating this big house is so much more expensive than the apartment was so we've been trying to keep the temperature a little lower than we'd like and just wearing sweaters and blankets around the house. It works pretty well. I have a cashmere sweater on. I found it at Saver's for like seven dollars! Amazing, since cashmere is so ridiculously expensive. I found out it comes from a very rare and particularly soft and fluffy goat somewhere in the Himalayas. No wonder it's expensive.

Work today wasn't too bad. I got everything done early, so I figured to get the rest of my hours by surfing the internet. I had everything shut off and closed down when someone was like, can you run this test? At least it wasn't a hard or complicated one. It was just a little annoying to turn everything back on and set up again and the instrument has to warm up for an hour so I ended up staying for more than 8 hours, which is fine, because it means I can leave a little earlier tomorrow! YAY Friday!

So we were going to have a B-day party for me next Saturday, but Mim got asked to be the producer of the latest community theater's production of "Zombie Prom". Definitely going to see that one. Anyway, it means she didn't have that weekend free anymore, so we decided to do it this Sunday instead. That will be the first day of phase 3 of my diet, so I'll be able to eat all the stuff we grill-just not in buns. And no chips. But Em said she knew how to make a low-carb cheesecake, so I actually DO get to have birthday cake!!! I'm craving something sweet.

It will be so nice to have a change of pace with the diet. It's been more than six weeks of eating specific small amounts off of a specific list of foods, so it'll be nice to have fewer restrictions. The rules for this phase are simple: eat anything you want, as much as you want, but no sugar or starch. So all cheese and meat and eggs and most vegetables are fair game, so that opens up many many options.

I've lost 27 pounds as of this morning. Three more days and we'll see where we end up. I'm predicting about 30 pounds total when I'm through with this phase.

Then, after six weeks, I can do my second course and I will lose the rest. If I can lose another 15-20 in the second course that will bring me to my target weight, and it will be the first time since 8th grade that I will not be labeled "overweight" according to those doctor chart thingies. Then, I'll go in to the doc and have some tests run and see if my blood pressure and cholesterol are down. Hopefully losing all the weight will correct those.

I'm just so excited for all this!

Crochet Bag

So, the crochet hooks I have are mostly from when I started, a.k.a. about 15 years. They're so tired...all chipped and sad. So, I went online and found a great deal on a package with LOTS of sizes...like 15 hooks or something, all for ten bucks plus shipping. Here's the fun part: They came in a pretty bag!!! Here it is:It's so hokey and tacky, but for some reason I love it.

Also, Scott has been so awesome for Valentine's and my upcoming birthday. I got two necklaces and lots of music and movies I've been wanting :) Here are my necklaces:The blurry one is a snowflake with real diamonds. It's my new precious.

Other than that, life is pretty normal. Family drama continues, and with these pregnancy hormones I'm beside myself with emotions. I feel like I'm completely out of control. Only 5 injections or so to go, and then no more hormones, and then I will resolve once and for all to never get pregnant. EVER.

On the plus side, I've lost 26 pounds! I'm hot.

So, the library in Clearfield super sucks. I got so spoiled in Sioux Falls with a huge library just a mile away. This one is like ten miles or something away from my house, and it's so tiny. I just finished reading and/or rereading all the books in my house, and now I need more so I can have something to do at work while my stuff is reacting or being run on the instrument. So, I went online and found a list of classic literature that everyone should read, and printed it off and headed for the library after work yesterday. And what do you know: they don't have most of those books. I heard that the Bountiful library is much much better, so maybe I'll try there next time.

Craving muffins. 7 weeks until I can eat muffins.

This diet is taking longer than I thought it would, but it's worth it I suppose. It's really only hard when I see food commercials on TV or someone gets to eat something tasty in front of me. Boo.