Monday goings-on and grumblings.

[update: Image from work... rainy puddly duckness]

I love rain. I always have. It promotes this desire for cozy snugglings by flickering fires and lots of drinking of tea. It doesn’t however, match well with sitting in one’s office gazing out at the bleakness of the day after having to drag oneself out of a warm, snuggly-blanketed-curled-up-warm-doggy-and-purring-cat bed (yes, they were piled on me like cordwood and I was not objecting). I truly, absolutely ABHOR Mondays. And I do not look forward to a whole day of it. And this morning is already shaping up to be a gloomy and icky one. Outside the kitchen window I see only sodden trellis, with the occasional sodden chickadees hunched in the little diamond-shaped gaps. I’m still in my Jammies when I should probably already be dressed and getting ready to head out the door. Motivation? -0-

Back in January, my husband started doing the Weight-Watchers program. I followed along for a bit, but he insisted I needed to get my own calculator and figure out my own points system... so I did. I started it last week. Hubby’s already lost over 23 pounds on the program (damned men and their fast weight-loss!). We’ll see how I fare. Weighing myself regularly is really depressing. I have about ten less points than he does a day; and so far I haven’t had too much of an issue staying within the daily limit and have not felt deprived at all—except maybe for a burning desire for a huge freakin’ burger and a pile of crunchy fries, and lobster and chocolate and more fries (I grew up in Belgium, remember? Fries are essential...) and now that I mentioned Belgium, I want to make up a batch of Belgian waffles to boot! GAH! Instead, I’m forced to weigh every slice of Tillamook cheddar I eat (gads, cheese is fattening!), and measure out the cereal and milk with my measuring cups and calculate the damage a slice of turkey meatloaf and saltine crackers can wreak.

We had a break from the pinching and measuring on Saturday night. We went to a nice little restaurant called Nel Centro in Portland to celebrate BFF Steph-II’s 25th birthday (she’s a youngun’). She had a long table set up and a bunch of friends and family there. It was hella (yeah, I said hella, live with it) fun. We got to hang out with Miss Charlotte and her husband Patrick, who turns out to be a really affable and excellent guy; and I laughed until my makeup raccooned around my eyes as it always does. I had lovely lamb-chops and chocolate crepes. Since it was a decent restaurant, the portions were not so large as one could feed a third-world family on for a week... they were quite moderate and tasteful. Less decent places tend to prefer quantity over quality and heap on the slop like they’re feeding hogs.

One of the funniest parts of the night was when we were all walking out onto the street and Stephanie II asked me: “Hey, did I by chance leave a pair of shoes at your house?” I paused to think and replied... “Am I wearing them?” and S-II glanced down at my feet and exclaimed: “YES!” to which we all burst into laughter. I had no idea I was wearing S-II’s shoes. I found them in my shoe-bin. I have had a shoe-addiction problem in the past and over the past few years, I’ve been winnowing down my huge collection of heels that I never wear into a manageable and modest assortment I can choose from for the occasional special event. However I only have mostly super-tall heels. When I was getting dressed to go, I found these cute twenties-style black shoes in the tumble of my other shoes. They had a small heel—which is what I wanted, and I thought they would do nicely. They looked familiar, were within my personal taste levels, so I figured I’d bought them and forgot I had. They were a smidge big, but quite comfortable. As soon as S-II mentioned it, I realized they were probably hers, because she has a particular style, and they were exactly the sort of shoe I’d imagine her wearing. It was pretty funny.

I woke up Sunday morning with a double zit right on the very tip of my nose. Makeup makes me break out... now I look like a female WC Fields with a danish-pastry nose. I HATE ZITS. I have this almost irrational unease with the idea of anything gross accumulating underneath my epidermis. I am almost obsessive-compulsive when it comes to blackheads and white heads. Gross. The perils of makeup. That's why I don't wear it often.

In a few more days, I will be going on to the Lupron. I am not looking forward to it, and I have apologized to my husband ahead of time several times to insure he knows that my irrational, crazy behaviour is not voluntary. A friend of a friend shared that she’d been on Lupron and she’s surprised she’s still married. I am officially scared. My blog might also reflect this Sybil-like transformation if it does occur. I might start blogging about my newfound affinity for attempted homicide and public nudity (be afraid!). If my blog goes silent, I very well might have been arrested or locked in a loony-bin for the duration. You never know. Just saying.

Work on getting my Dassenplank developed is marching forward very nicely. I think I might have stumbled on to an excellent partner and he has really great ideas to make the dassenplank even better than my original one. I am also working to create a custom fabric with some office-specially style artwork through Spoonflower so I can make custom carrying cases for the dassenplanks. We (Brad the magical-I-can-build-anything man and I) also talked other possible collaborative projects. So exciting!

Anyway, that’s the Monday update. Not quite so bleak.. but yet, I haven’t left for work yet... so I don’t know.