Li'l Momma's Rant-O-Rama

and i feel like someone slapped my ass right back into reality. this morning was cold and rainy, the exact opposite of the 80-degrees-and-sunny weather we'd had for the last week on the ship... i looked up at one point, and jack was forlornly peering out the window, pining "why is it so cold? and where is a waiter with a pina colada for me?" poor guy. he's taking it hard. :)

i think the hardest thing for me to readjust to will be the lack of naps. i'm dragging today. this was my day on friday, a full day at sea:

9:00am - wake up and head to deck 11 for breakfast
9:30am - grab 2 lounge chairs by the adults-only pool and read
11:30am - nap
12:00 - lunch
12:30 - pina colada and more reading
3:00 - nap
4:00 - jack wakes me up from my nap so we can go back to our cabin and nap

yeah. it's hard to be back in the real world. and will someone tell the world to stop tilting? i haven't gotten my "land legs" back, my equilibrium is still off.

i won't bore everyone with a play-by-play of every single thing we did on our trip... ( here are a handful of photos and highlights. )

i'll post about the trip later, we had a fabulous time. for now, i have to think about procuring dinner foodz and filling another hoop order tonight (i didn't get an order for weeks on end, now 2 on the very weekend i go away?!?!?). that, and i have to mentally process the estimate i got from one of my potential landscapers this afternoon. i figured this guy would be the most expensive of the 3 i'm interviewing, based on his angie's list reviews... but whoa. please, PLEASE let the other quotes be half of this, or i'm screwed.

i just HAD to get out of the house last night. i still felt like crap (i swear, sore throats are the worst thing ever), but i needed fresh air and a few minutes of walking. ended up at the mall, where i found - gasp - the exact earrings i've been searching for to go with my new cocktail dress. i had an idea in my head of what would look perfect, but searches over the last couple of weeks turned up nothing... i was beginning to give up, figuring that this was yet another case of me looking for the impossible. but nope, they do exist! yay!

between the earrings and the new yummy shower gel i picked up at bath & body works, i came home a little lighter in spirit. it's funny how something so simple can perk me up a bit. still have a bit of the cold hanging on this morning (and i barely got any sleep again last night), but i've improved enough that i'm going back to the office today.

annnnnnd... that's all i got.

good stuff from yesterday:

* my brother came over yesterday to look at the hot mess that is my backyard. i have a back garden that is completely overgrown with weeds, a patch of dirt along my house that i tried to seed with grass but is already a solid mass of weeds (sensing a theme here?), and a giant hole nearby that the previous owners tried to fill with broken tiles and dirt. he looked at everything, took a list of plants i love, and 30 minutes later had sketched up stunningly cool landscaping plans for all of it. (i love having a landscape designer as a brother.) i can't wait to get someone in to do the work... this is going to be such a transformation.

* last night some of us went to see a performance of ms_violet's play "traveling light" at the shubin theater. i am beyond proud. to see actors standing in a real theater, saying words that one of my good friends had written, was beyond cool. and it's a really good play, too! eeeEEEeee!

bad stuff from yesterday:

* i spent most of the night up with a sore throat... one of those agonizing fiery sore throats that can't be quenched no matter what you do. by 1am i was in tears. it's calmer now, it's more scratchy than sore... but those 8 or 9 hours of ouch completely sucked.

* i found out yesterday (thank you, consumerist.com) that royal caribbean has been paying people to go on the cruise critic boards and post positive stuff about them to get more business. hrm. but the thing that makes me really angry is that when i posted a thread about it on cruise critic, CC pulled the thread. no surprise i guess, considering royal caribbean gives them advertising dollars. grrrrrrr.

the spring weather today completely lifted my spirits. we opened the back door to let some air in through the screen, and it was so nice to air the house out. angus loved it as well -- jack moved his kitty condo over to the doorway, so that he could climb up to be level with the screen:



he wouldn't budge from that spot for hours.

after an afternoon of errands* (i have all my cruise shopping done, yay), i'm sitting here smelling a rack of ribs cooking in the oven, which we'll have with a salad and some cornbread later tonight. YUM.

last night was a good night as well, jack and i got to hang out with xtingu and mrl24 at the 10:30pm IMAX showing of "watchmen". i really liked it, especially the line of doofy college guys sitting behind us all dressed up as dr. manhattan (no they weren't naked, they painted white boxer briefs blue). and the best part of all: i am now the proud owner of a jill knapp original from her "Hello" series -- "Hello Angus"! hee! i love it so much, it looks just like angus. check it out:




*so, one of today's errands was to hit costco. i joined a couple of weeks ago, and this was my first shopping trip there. i learned 2 things there: 1. never ever go to costco on a saturday afternoon (sweet baby jesus, the crowds! the rudeness of the crowds!), and 2. you can save a TON of money. i didn't believe it at first, because we only got a handful of things and it came to $135 which made me go *eek*. but a couple of hours later, i was at the local supermarket and wrote down the "price per unit" of the things we bought at costco, to compare... and WHOA. if we had bought those quantities at my regular supermarket, it would have cost us $60 MORE. on just those few things! we saved almost $25 just on the steaks we got to grill with my family tomorrow. and the giant pack of zyrtec was another $20 savings. okay, i'm officially sold... for those thigns you can use in bulk, costco is worth the membership.

54 degrees this saturday.
54 degrees this saturday.
54 degrees this saturday.

too antsy to enjoy the snow day today. i'd really really like to go out and shovel the driveway, but it's still snowing pretty hard... anything i clear out will just get covered and require another round. bummer is that i have meetings straight through from 1-5pm that i have to call in for... so i can't start shoveling until the end of the day. i think i'm going to be hauling snow in the dark... it's getting pretty deep out there.

just saw a guy in a ski mask walking his dog out in the snow. does anyone really wear a ski mask in the cold? he looked like a bank robber walking this little white poofy poodle thing. the dog was a hoot -- every few feet it would plunge its face in the snow, *poomph* and then come up grinning, its curly face completely covered in white powder. a few feet later, *poomph* again. i laughed out loud, it was so cute.

angus is thrilled i'm home. he has me all to himself, and gets the other half of the couch. (he doesn't get the other half of the couch when uncle jack is over.) he's snoring away right next to me, every once in a while he rolls over onto his back and offers me his big floofy belly to rub. which is good, because i'm easily distracted this morning... i'm getting work stuff done, but i really want to get the shoveling over with. meh.

yesterday was a much-needed veg fest. unfortunately i don't mean "veg" in the culinary sense, which is something i really need to purge the junk food from my system. but jack and i spent the day relaxing and running errands, with a long nap thrown in for good measure, which was good for the soul.

one thing i did accomplish during the errand-run, though, was finding a pair of heels to go with the cocktail dress i bought for the cruise. i realized the other day that all my black heels fall into 2 categories: 1. boring work pumps (don't go with the dress at all), and 2. suede-soled dance shoes (not good for walking around the ship because the soles could get ruined). the problem is that i hate most dressy shoes i see in stores, they all seem to be made of very stiff satin and super-uncomfortable. but lo and behold, i checked out DSW and found a pair of dressy heels that are so darn sexy AND go with my dress AND were on sale:



hard to tell in the photo, but the front is a ruffle made out of thick grosgrain ribbon. looooooove! so, whew, cross that off my list.

all i can think about anymore is this cruise, it's awful. last night we booked an excursion in cozumel -- a mexican cooking class at a beach resort that i've heard is a ton of fun. i figure, jack loves to cook, and we both love to eat, so it's right up our alley. :) the belize excursion is up in the air, i was kind of hoping to find somewhere where i could have a massage on the beach, but so far no luck. we'll see. honestly, i'm at the point where i don't care if we get off the ship, have lunch, and get back on board to drink by the pool. i'm just happy we're going away, because i think this'll be our last vacation for a while.

in the meantime, tomorrow starts a new week. i'm going to be back on WW after a tumultuous 2-week hiatus, so i have a huge batch of taco soup simmering in the crockpot and i'm setting my alarm to get up early tomorrow to work out. nad my schedule is looking packed with meetings... so the days should go by fast.

yep, i'm definitely antsy for spring. the majority of my thoughts these days are centered around what i'll be able to do once the weather warms up. last night i started daydreaming about all the house repairs i'm going to make with my tax refund... especially the overgrown mess that's supposed to be a garden in my backyard. i'm hoping my brother (who's a landscape designer) can see through the tangles and figure out what can be kept (probably the forsythia and the hydrangea), and then tell me how i can put all my favorite plants in there in a way that looks good. between that and mulching all my other plants (i haven't done that since i moved in), i think the outside will look gorgeous for a change this year. if i can get all that done, plus finally rebuild my no-longer-tree-infested powder room, i just may faint from happiness. :)

for now, though, i have to prep for a big presentation i'm giving this afternoon. even though i was a trainer for several years, getting up in front of a room full of people and presenting work i've done gives me heart palpitations. whew.