garnet77's Journal

Back at me mommys! Hoping now that there'll be regular $$ flowing we can get the comp fixed within the next 2 months. I only miss it kinda a lil bitty bit.. hmm.. at one time I thought I'd go bonkers without it. Hmm, just realised anything I had to say was going to be a repeat. Super excited for the field trip, H took me apple picking on our second date:)

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Super quick here cause im at my mommas.. my comp is down, down as in it needs a major influx of cash to get it opperational again..  im not dead, miss you guys though and odd things'll make me think of y'all - like going for a drive in hfx. and passing the purple houses :D my kid is doing great with the french. decided to become a lunch monitor at his school so he'd actually have time to sit down and eat.. the walking back and forth was taking up a lotta important time :) i even get paid a lil too. not Ben's class but next door. awesome lil kids. first field trip apple picking is coming up, hoping i can volunteer. hope all is going well with you guys!!!!!! luv and hugs  <3<3<3 (can't make proper hearts on my moms comp!!)

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Yesterdays improvements over last weeks eating

too much Chester's Popcorn but not a whole large bag of chips
didn't eat one take out meal
had a proper supper, one I cooked
other than Chester's Popcorn, ate nothing in excess

So far today...
again, more Chester's Popcorn than I should have had. No 'but' there.
K.D. for lunch. Nearly tasteless cause I used 1% milk and light margarine but a sensible portion

No chips in the house except for H's Sun Chips. I am a known chip fiend though but I am doing my damndest to forget they're there. Not mine. Not mine. NOT MINE. We bought some smaller dinner plates last week.. H's idea.. figures he'll eat less if he fills a smaller plate. My plan to help myself is to prepare stuff ahead of time. Some time today I'm going to mix my dip for my baby carrots so I can just scoop out a lil when i have a snack and I'm going to wash and shred the lettuce. I hate hate hate having to prep stuff so I can eat. I'm all about instant gratification. Food from a bag, a box, sometimes, rarely a can. Something I can nuke is great too. Unfortunately all those foods suck. (yeah I know about fruit but it's not my cuppa tea) Not counting. Not measuring. Eyeballing. Eyeballing to keep from getting too involved/intense/crazy. Thinking about actually destroying my scale. The one for weighing me. It's kinda trashed anyway.. doesn't take too kindly to being dunked in water.. and it was cheap to begin with and getting old. Again, in an attempt to not get too involved/intense/crazy. I can keep track and weigh at my moms every so often but I'm not ready to find out what that number would be. Hers always gave me 5lbs more than mine :Þ

In other non food/weight related news..

Did you know cats are supposed to hate the sound of a harmonica? I found this out (though how reliable I dunno) cause I googled cats and harmonicas cause my cat LOVES it. She starts purring and rubbing her face up against the corners and kneading flesh. Yep, she's just as strange as the rest of us. She fits in with our family well :)


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Dunno what to say. I half feel crappy for not having been here (in my journal and in comments.. been reading when I can) but at the same time I really dig it. I don't spend hours online anymore...searching, looking, reading. I haven't seen any drama around here for months (but I'm sure that's just I'm not reading the forums)! At the same time I do miss the chatting and the friends. I'm not online long enough to start a conversation anymore though! Not home long enough to do housework either.. bleh.. Have to get to that sometime today. We come and go so quickly we don't bother to tidy up after ourselves so when H goes back to work I have a mountain of housework to do. Still, it's worth it, I'd rather make the most of his days off and not spend them cleaning unless e have to. Anyway.

I've discovered I'm an all or nothing kinda chick.. either I eat like a cow pig or I count. I can't find a happy medium!!! That's what I'm doing back here. I'm tired of eating like crap, I'm sure I've gained back all the lbs I lost since I started wavering last Aug. but I don't wanna look. I can tell by the way my clothes are fitting, or barely fitting. So even H said he had to start eating better.. it's only been a couple days but he's already doing better than I am. It shames me enough that I wanna try harder. I'm not going to count cals. I can't. I get too involved. I'm going to try for the happy medium. Again. Have healthy food in the house. Going to eat it gawd dangit. Cut back on the chips and eating out. Small bags of chips if I have em and healthier choices more often when eating out.

OH MY GAWD! Sesame Street had a take off on Law & Order SUV!! They're only missing Finn (Ice-T).. Special Letters Unit.. tee hee.

So yeah. Happy Medium.

In other news.. Ben is 5!! He thinks he's 15!! He thinks he can do as he pleases. Damn independant streak. I was/am so shy I wanted to prime him to be independant from day one.. enviroment based personality.. I think personality is part environment, part ingrained.. lil did I know he had independance hardwired in him so now we have a 5 y.o. with an independant streak 5 miles wide. When H is at work he doesn't wake me up when he gets up.. he watches Treehouse (age appropriate t.v. station) and gets himself a bowl of cereal. Usually within the hour he cranks the t.v. too loud or is laughing pretty loudly while he plays with Charlie and then I wake up. Luckily he can be trusted not to get into trouble.

H got a raise and a sort of promotion. He's got a new title but he's still doing the same thing he was doing only now the boss says "What he says, goes. Go to him first if you have a problem." He also got the go ahead to have a show n shine. Won't be a big thing but they're going to sell hot dogs and pop etc and give the $$ to their charity. He's hoping to do it again next year bigger. He'll have more time to get it together then.

Charlie is about 4 months old now, long and lean and as energetic as the kid. She likes to attack arms and feet, biting and gnawing. She is starting to relax with that a bit, most of my scratches have healed :) She's just playing but she is ROUGH sometimes! She likes going for drives still and she is getting more used to walking on the leash back and forth to the car. She's been staying home lately though cause I don't wanna drag her around when it's too hot or when we'd have to leave her in the car for more than a trip to the convience store.

Supposed to go camping Wednesday, our first time, a trial run at a campground in the city and Charlie'll be coming along. The rules say nothing about cats but dogs are allowed on a leash. We have just about everything we need.. H wanted to get airmattresses but after he did we wouldn't fit in the tent. He decided to take it back to work and trade it in for a slightly larger one and got lucky it was on sale and got it for the same price. Now we just need a lantern and we'll be good to go. We've already got trips planned for Louisbourg (5 hour drive one way and it's an all day thing so an overnight would be great) and back to Sussex, NB to see the hot air balloons, maybe even to PEI to see the sand sculptures. My only issue with camping is the showers. I must shower every day (deep fried head). I know they have showers but I need privacy. I also know every campground will have a different kind of set up (most likely). I wanna figure something out cause being able to camp out will make for some awesome adventures.

Had a grand adventure yesterday.. went back down to the valley cause the apple people were having a 50th anniversary party and we'd had a good time at the Apple Blossom Festival. We used my new Backroads Map Book to get there and got lost on South Mountain going down dirt roads that didn't even have a name or a sign. They weren't just dirt roads they were... unspeakable. Access roads for cel towers it turned out. According to my map they were fine, but the map doesn't show all of the  roads so we were screwed. Anyhoo, it was fun. Then we get to the event, a bounce house, mini nascar racers again and a maze/bounce/giant slide dealie. All free. And since it was cloudy there weren't a lotta people so the lines were short. The maze/bounce/slide dealie was the most popular and Ben only had to wait for about 3-4 kids before he got to go again. Tried out the backroads on the way home and ended up on nasty dirt roads again  :/  My favourite new thing seems to be useless. Ah well.

I dunno if I wrote about this before but I have new drugs. Old ones actually. My happy pills are now the precursor to the ones I was taking. Doc said they difference is they have a part of them that is useless. The new ones didn't have that part. Work the same though. Difference is one is covered by my medical one isn't. No more deep dark wanna beat someone anger like there was and I get out of the house a LOT more :) So they work well for me :) So I guess that's it. Won't go back over the stuff we've been doing the last month or two but it's all good. Going to try to keep up with the journaling, it's a good thing I know it is. Urg, gotta go clean now, and pack and plan. YAY!

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okay, I won't count the ways i suck, I know i do.

been busy, been sick. still am. just saw the doc again today for more penicillin and this time i won't fuck up taking it! dammit. 6 weeks i've been sick. I'm either running around or wiped out. since it's nice out and there is stuff to do i run around when i shouldn't.

mad crazy awesome things we've done so far this spring...

• overnight trip to lookit covered bridges in Sussex NB
• fair in east Hants.. rode the tilt a whirl with my boys.. best time ever
• mini golf (i think Ben kicked my butt)
• lil rays reptile show (i think is the name - from TO)
• drive in movie, double feature Firehouse Dog & Blades of Glory
  

well, thats just a lil - but dang, lots family fun :)

Tomorrow is Bens last day of pre-school. He thinks he'll be starting elementary directly afterwards, doesn't get he has one last summer of freedom to enjoy! Did i write about his primary orientation? I don't remember much about it anyway but he had it and loved it. At first he didn't wanna go but then he didn't wanna go to back to pre-school. We started reading Ramona books. Anyone remember Ramona Quimby? Ramona the Pest? They're chapter books for lil kids, kids older than Ben, I read em but he likes following along despite there only being maybe two pics per chapter! We have 3 Ramona books and have finished 1.5 already. I remember reading em when I was a kid, didn't realise the copyright was like 1955!! The other day we invited ourselves to my moms for a bbq (we were good guests and brought the food) and afterwards we went outside and tossed a ball and Ben and a bat and dang that kid rocks! We'd been to Os tee-ball practise but they were barely throwing yet. I've heard O can whack the ball pretty well too. So today we got Ben a bat and ball he is pretending not to know about for 'graduation' tomorrow :)

Charlie has had her second and final (cause she's a house cat though she dun wanna be) set of shots. She had a blood test to check for feline leukemia and something else but she's clean. Only problem was the fleas which we got rid of. She's a calico tabby, apparently means she comes equipped with tonnes of attitude. Its true, she does. Only issue is the biting but we're dealing. Oh, and the constant hunt for human food esp. anything dairy which we never ever have given her. Vet said catmilk was okay so we got her some which she loves. Has to give her a bath about a week ago, got her some tearless shampoo, heehee, kitty shampoo, cause a lil boy with grubby corn on the cob paws had to nab her off of the table.. (her on the hunt for human food). Course she tried to get out, claws got stuck in flesh but nothing too terrible. After a few attempts she sat and let me pour water over her back. Got her out, dried her off and she licked and licked and licked. She climbed under the sheet on the bed with me to stay warm I think. She seemed to be shivering a lil. But wanyway, she's a great cat, fits in well and is as crazy as the rest of us. I had to check with the vet to make sure she hadn't chubbed up too quickly, she gained about a pound between one set of shots and the last! She's looking good though, skinny as hell when soaking wet so I dun worry anymore. Her eyes are all green now, a smokey, greyish kinda green, not gold despite what the pics look like.

So I feel like I've got a fever and I need to hack a lung and take my meds. Hope everyone is doing fine. *waves*

((?hugs?))





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:)


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Strange how I used to have an entry every day.. sometimes 2 or three and now.. *shrug* I need to start getting back here, if not to journal at least to track my cals cause I've been eating like crap for so long now my clothes are getting uncomfortably tight. Yep. That bad.

Ben's orientation is tomorrow.. haven't told him cause I'd never hear the end of it.. I'll wait til bedtime tonight :) H is going to try to see if he can take off for a couple hours so he can be there *fingers crossed* We've got his birthday party just about set.. He'll be turning 5 June 6th. Got the hall, got a clown booked, not the one I'd decided on before.. waited too long to call her back and she was booked but we got another guy.. 1 hour, just less than $100, he juggles first, badly, gets kids laughing, then does 20 minutes of magic then every kid gets a balloon animal. If it runs passed 1 hour doesn't matter, every kid gets a balloon. So that seems to work out well. We'd had the hall booked for 2 hours but then we were concerned it'd take a lil longer to get everything done.. an hour of clown, 4 or 5 games.. granted a couple are really simple and short but then throw in the first half hour of kids arriving and running around like fools and then cake and presents.. so we got an extra hour, only an extra $15! Woo. We decided to do the games etc ourselves instead of getting the fancy party people. It's his first big birthday party, prolly his last til 10 (couble digits yanno) but it was almost $400 for that + goodie bags and food out of our pocket. Seemed a lil too crazy to me. We also have the treat bags made already. We were in Shoppers Drug Mart the other day and I saw some great things we can use as prizes, cheap! A whole bucket of sidewalk chalk for $2.99!!! I've gotta check out the games and make a list of the things we'll need to get next. The food is simple cause I'm keeping it simple simple simple and hoping the kids'll be too busy to wanna eat much other than the cake and ice cream. Juice, popcorn, crackers (gold fish), carrots and celery sticks. Going for healthier snacks considering the cake and ice cream and all the sugar in the treat bags. God bless the Bulk Barn and Dollarama.Not too concerned that the kids'll be looking at me sideways for the carrot sticks cause 3/4 of them are in Bens class and get that type of thing at school and I've seen them gobble them down. Anyway.

Our cat is insane. She's getting really bite-y lately. Do cats teethe? Actually, she's always been bite-y but she's hurting and not stopping when told like she used to. Since my crazy brother in law took his trunks back I've been using a tv table with a table cloth which hangs to the floor to hold the phone etc. Charlies treats are also up there. She has taken to scaling the tablecloth to get to the top. I told her, no, and plucked her down a few times, then I started telling her no, squirting her butt with a water bottle and plucking her down. I've heard the squirting is good for when they claw furniture.. to teach them not to.. dunno.. but she learned not to climb.. she's started to, I've said no and she's jumped down. I dunno if the squirting is considered acceptable but whatelse can ya do to teach a cat? Not like I'm going to smack her butt or whap her with a newspaper :) Even if she was a dog I wouldn't do that! :) She is still cool with going for drives in the car. The other day we took off.. when halfway down the shore then across the province along the old highways.. were gone longer than expected.. at one point we left a town only to make a loop right back into it, oops. We'd prepared for Charlie.. yeah, we drive around with a litter box in the back of the car and she uses it too. We'd taken a bowl and water for her but when we were gone so long we started looking for a place that had cat food too. At one point I saw a sign for a motel and suggested staying in one.. H was 'driving by the seat of his pants' (just following signs and whims which was how we looped that one town) so.. we totally would have spent the night in some lil 2 star motel if it wasn't for one lil thing. Insulin. H doesn't carry it with him, he gets one shot at 10:30pm so it stays home. We dunno if he can skip one shot or what would happen if he did. He also has night time meds he's supposed to take. But he said we could totally do a night away this weekend! Woo!! So I've been googling 2 star motels that accept pets :) Clean bed and clean shower, that's all we need :)

I'm trying to get more use out of my photo printer so I came up with a project.. take lots of beeuuuutiful scenic pics, frame em (dollar store frames :)) and hang em in a group. Then I thought if I could get some of Peggy's Cove I could have a group of them.. so we drove on down, climbed over the rocks and got some pics. Ben and I are going to print them this afternoon.. just going to print em all and pluck out the good ones :) I told H we should do a grouping of all the giant-ass things in the province i.e. in Oxford they have a giant blueberry, there is also a mastadon at mastadon ridge and a few other big things I can't think of :)






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I had a huge long entry... then Charlie jumped on the keyboard. Gone gone gone. Nothing interesting anyway, just some Charlie updates cause nothing else much has been going on. She's the sweetest thing, I hope she never changes. She got her first shot and is going end of month to get another and a blood test for feline leukemia and something else.  She'll be spayed at about 5 months. Definately a she :) She's chubbing up nicely.. feed her a lil bit 3 times a day.. equals 1 can of wet but she has dry all day(going to be adjusting this soon though). She likes the wet best but she's still eating the Friskies.. it says for adults and kittens but I wanna get her on kitten wet exclusively. She likes going in the car.. she loves to play and explore (duh, she's a kitten! :)) she's got a big cache of toys.. mostly bit from around the house, t.p. roll, some yarn toys, I made her 4 new ones with some cotton yarn my mom gave me, H even picked up a laser pointer for her the other night :) She's really good about being mauled.. when she is asleep  I can hold her and move her and brush her and pretty soon I'll prolly be clipping her nails. They got done at the vets and since then she hasn't been using them, still likes to bite but she seems to understand 'gentle'. Trying to teach her a few other words but I dunno how well that'd work for a cat. "dinnerdinnerdinner" when I put food down .. "toys" when I want her to go play (particularily when she's being and ankle biter) or when I'm going to play with her and "dirty girl" when she is cleaning in the hopes that one day I can say that and point and she'll see.. oh, I need to clean that! Long shot on that last one, I know, but it can't hurt to try, eh? :) Oh, and "kiss kiss" when I go at her, kinda of an early warning system for her to run if she wants to.. not that she does that yet.. she tends to kiss back but when she's older.. :) Ben is jealous, not as bad as it could be, he still loves Charlie, he just doesn't like not being the only one getting attention so we're dealing with that.  He has primary orientation coming up soon. EEK!! He's getting so old! He's going to be 5 next month!!!!!!! Gotta get him to the doc to check out his ears and eyes.. he had an appt at school for vision testing but they cancelled the whole thing.. dunno why. Prolly just get him a whole check up. Supposed to have gone back to talk about my happy pills and stuff by now anyway. Painted our bathroom. I wanted one wall a medium blue.. it's a tiny bathroom. H wanted the whole thing blue. I didn't argue, it wasn't important enough. I picked the colour but it didn't turn out the way I pictured. I don't think it came out the right blue.. H likes it though. With the blue shower curtain (which shrunk in the wash) it's a lil too blue now so I think I can get a new shower curtain at least. H did white trim so maybe a white curtain.. it's a sky blue.. looks like I should sponge clouds on it or paint bubbles. Going to try to work with it though. Our cell ended up in the garbage in a puddle of water. Water was actually coming out of it. It worked for a minute.. then we couldn't even turn it off. Got H to take the battery out then figured it's fucked anyway so I took it apart, let it dry out and put it back together.. works fine now. Still even have the display. It's a simple old Nokia.. cheapest they had cause it's mostly just for emergencies but damn that thing took a beating and keeps working! H used to work at a call center.. AT&T then Cingular but he was gone before it became at&t so he knew what phones had what problems.. he said with Nokia when they got wet the first thing was always dry em out and 75% of the time they worked again. Yay. Didn't wanna dish out $100 for a new phone cause of a stupid mistake. So now I've rambled and I'm done :) *waves to everyone* ?

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The cat is growling!! I stg!! We were playing with this mouse on a spring thing that has feathers sticking out of its butt, having a grand old time.. I'd toss it a couple feet and she'd wrestle it back to me. Then all of a sudden she started growling!! Low and deep in her throat... shocked me so I just let her go with it... she took it across the room to play by herself. Ben was getting too close and she was growling again! She played with it a bit then abandoned it under a table.. hmm.. didn't think they could even growl! And a couple hissing noises came out too! Obviously I haven't seen this from her before (with the exception of the first night she squeezed behind the desk and I had to chase her out she hissed at me) so I made Ben stay away from her but I played with her to try to figure out what was going on. I think she was growling and spitting at the mouse! I was worried she'd scratch Ben or I but I stuck my hand close by a few times and she didn't care.. it was all the mouse. Huh.  :)

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EDIT: Apparently the soup worked out pretty well :) Made it heavy on chicken, high-med veg, low noodle.. all around good for Ben though. Didn't give him as much as I would have if it was a can of Chunky cause of all the chicken, figured it'd fill him up pretty well :) He helped make it so I let him think he did it all by himself. I asked if he thought he'd like the soup he maxtra carrots de. Yep! He even decided himself about the corn and peas (yes for both). After he was eating it he didn't want the green beans and he wanted to know what the orange stuff was, a few bits he left behind. Must have been the rutabega. We decided next time we'd get efor the soup though. I wanted him to try something new (rutabega) but I know he's not keen on the green beans, maybe next time we'll skip those :) It was SO easy to make it I dunno why it took me so long to get around to it!
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No problems with the spot on Bens butt, it's a tiny lil slightly purple-ish spot about this - O - big. It was a bump when he was a baby, it changed and started looking like a zit, hurt him, and then 'popped' or something (when it changed we went to see the doc). Yesterday was a follow up. It's not just a lil coloured spot, no bump, no nasty, nada. Ben didn't wanna drop trou but other than that he was fine. He remember getting a popsicle last time and he really wanted one this time.

Okay, I know it's completely weird. Don't care. I'M weird so it can't be a big surprise. We got Charlie a new collar, a kitten one, one that fits.. it's a harness.. with a leash.. for a CAT. Yup yup. I'm going to be one of THOSE people. To someone else looking in I might also look like someone who uses their pet as an accessory.. my cutest one :) but no.. not an accessory. Just like to take her along when she is asleep in my arms instead of putting her down and coming back I just take her along :) We wanna take her along with us when we can.. if she can dig going for a walk in the park, why the hell not?! :D If she can dig going for a ride in the car, why the hell not? She's a house cat but she doesn't have to stay in all the time does she? I don't wanna set her free to get lost or hit by a car or attacked by another cat or knocked up (til she gets fixed -fixed, she's not broken) or tormented by a rotten kid (there are so many kids around here there has to be a rotten one or two) If it's not her bag that's cool too but.. *shrug*

Today I am going to attempt to make soup for Ben. I used to make baby food - just the veg. Then I did pre-made meals with a meat and veg so I'd just nuke or pop em in the oven when I was at a loss as to what to feed him. I've been meaning to make him soup for years. I'd mentioned it to my mom once and she made him some but now I've actually got some stuff. But I dunno what to do with it. I'm not a 'from scratch' type of gal. I have a can of 25% less sodium chicken broth. Frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts. Frozen vegetables.. a mix of potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, onion maybe something else.. green beans! I think.. It's a stew mix. I just wanted one that had a few veg Ben liked. I have a bag of peas and a bag of corn too. Dunno if it's a good idea to mix em all or not.. I'm not going to eat it. Oh, and a bag of egg noodles. Anyway.. what I'm actually supposed to do now I dunno what to do with it all. Called Mom but she must be out. :) I have a tiny slow cooker.. I've never used it.. H did once for beans.. Ah well :)

Happy weekend y'all!! *waves*


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