cookies

i started to make banana bread, since there are some just-a-tad-old-for-eating bananas on my counter. then i got to the part where i should have added 2 eggs. oops. there would still have been 2 eggs had shaggy not made himself an egg for breakfast before i woke up (i'm not complaining that he did that - i'm suggesting that i should have counted eggs before i creamed any butter and sugar). so i went flipping through the cookbook for something using similar amounts of butter/sugar and only 1 egg. the end result was chocolate chunk/cappuccino chip and pecan cookies, which are currently cooling. i don't think the proposed diet will happen this week. this is an ongoing struggle - i've been lucky so far and always had a job/lifestyle that kept me active and at least relatively thin. however, for nearly a year now i've driven to work, and sat at a desk all day (as opposed to biking 3 miles, unloading trucks and moving furniture for 8 hours, and biking 3 miles home). the result being roughly 23 additional pounds by last count. not so fun. i can still fit most of the clothes, but i'm finding much less need for belts lately. so either a diet, or exercise, or both had better figure prominently in my near future. my trouble is going to sound crazy - i don't know where to begin. my husband is a personal trainer/fitness instructor, and yet i'm too stubborn to let him help, so i'm basically trying to motivate myself. it goes like this:
"okay, it's late tonight, but i'm going to get up early tomorrow and run on one of the treadmills at the y before work" then the alarm goes off at some ridiculously early hour (shaggy has already left on his marathon-training run by this point). i turn off the alarm and chuckle myself back to sleep. i snooze until the last possible second, and generally get myself to work on time, albeit a tad disheveled (the wet hair and all). i generally don't give myself time to stop for coffee on the way in (that last "snooze" really makes a difference...), so thank goodness the office has a coffee maker that actually works now. of course, by the end of the work day, i'm ready to GO! i do NOT want to stay here another second (here being the ymca, also where the workout facilities are...) once i am home there is food to make, kitties to snuggle, books to read, a latchhook that i'm working on (for no reason i can discern, nor do i have any idea what i'll do with the thing once it's finished, and yet i plug away). no really active stuff besides walking hobbes to the mailbox and back.
so this is why i am gaining pudge.
i did just start a soccer league, which sounds like it would help, except that i'm the goalie so i mostly just stand around, yell encouragement to team members, and occasionally flail wildly at a ball as it comes whizzing past me into the goal (hey, i didn't say i was any good). today we lost 13-2.
some kind of challenge would probably be good - there was a time (on a weeklong trip) that i said i was going to run every morning i was gone, and someone had the nerve to scoff. i ran 2 miles a day that week, and improved my running time by a total of 4 minutes. lately though, i say oh, i'll work out and get in shape, and they say, really, good for you, and then i don't.
so, enough with the working out stuff- on to the dieting stuff. shaggy is on the "runner's diet" which means he eats all the same stuff i do, then adds black beans, salad, salmon or chicken, and snacks of oranges, dark chocolate, almonds, and protein bars throughout the day. i tried to get into it - i got myself some dried fruit for snacks, got juice instead of "juice-drinks" and picked up some power and balance bars... i also quit starbucks (unless someone else was buying). i did great for about a week and a half. then, halfway through a balance gold bar (triple chocolate, and not too disgusting) i made the mistake of reading the ingredients label. notice to the world:
THERE IS FISH IN BALANCE BARS!!!! yep, fish. as in the vegetarian in my office who had also been eating balance bars is PISSED! and i'm none too pleased myself. i DON'T eat fish- at least not knowingly. i don't know why, but i had assumed that energy bars were vegetarian in nature... so, i'm down to powerbar prias since they're the only bar i can stomach that does not contain dead animals. and they only come in 2 flavors. and i can only handle so much dried fruit. and starbucks is calling. so perhaps i'll sue balance bar and get money for expensive healthy food that tastes good (all the organic stuff and whatnot). yeah. or find my gloves and pull out the punching bag. i love my punching bag, yet somehow i never feel like beating on it until about 10:30 or so at night, and it does make a bit of noise...
just for fun, i bought a kids-ish book "once upon a more enlightened time" (the sequel to "politically correct bedtime stories". it's a riot! hansel and gretel meet a wiccan, who convinces them to be eco-friendly, and they change their names to heathdweller and gaia and join forces with the wiccan to fight their father the tree-butcher... and "sleeping persun of better-than-average attractiveness" slumbers for 100 years only to be woken by a student of enlightenment who thinks she will teach him meditation...i especially love the politically correct alphabet:
A is an Activist itching to fight
B is a Beast, with animal rights
C was a Cripple (now differently-abled)
D is a Drunk who is "liquor-enabled"
fantastic! not too challenging of a read, but very, very entertaining.
yay - i did a book review!
speaking of books - i finally started mine! i have "completed" two chapters and realized that i have a LOT of research to do (it's historical fiction, based on the lives of some of my ancestors, set in a david mamet's oleana sort of frame - two opposing characters tell the story in alternating first-person chapters. and it's set in missouri and illinois in the mormon settlement era, and yes, it involves polygamy and the surrounding conflict). so yeah, a bit complicated, but man, this is going to be fun! i don't know of anyone having tried to bridge the gap before between staunch support and ardent denial of polygamy being okay. not that i sway completely either way. yes it sounds messed up, but in the culture of the time, there were many, many widows, and back then it was pretty tough for women to take care of themselves. so i can see why it may have made some sense. on the other hand, not so many people know about the women who secretly had more than one husband, so that's got to factor into the fairness issue. and then there's the religious stuff. mormons were still figuring out their own religion, and then it got all mixed up with the freemasons, and then they split into a bunch of factions... it's definitely interesting to see how mormonism today is not much like what it was back in the day - except that the meetings were still super long. but yeah, lots of research. i googled a bunch of stuff and downloaded a bunch of stuff, and i'm putting together a list of books i'll need to read, and eventually i should probably visit the places i'm writing about.
this isn't going to be done any time soon.
and i think that's it for the blog tonight.

so many things

to start with, we're playing musical chairs at work. someone got promoted to another branch, and someone else hurt their back and quit to go on disability, so then we all had to shift around to fill the spaces. Our volunteer became a part-time employee, we added a temp, our executive secretary became the IT person, and now it's been suggested that i go executive secretary - which would mean more money, a smaller desk, and a different boss... i like my boss though. however, the thought of and extra $300 a month is nothing i'm going to sniff at. so we'll see. of course, then someone would have to fill my desk, and i think i know who could do it, but then we'd have to hire or promote someone to do his job, and the list goes on. so that's work.

at the wildlife center, we're still building a new enclosure for my buddy tonka (to whom, sadly, i am becoming increasingly more allergic). i learned how to use hog-ring pliers two weeks ago, and then last week i got to use them until i blood-blistered both my palms, so that was really fun... i really want to get this done though, since right now tonka's rooming with sasha (another mountain lion who HATES people) so it pisses her off if anyone visits him, but then he gets sad if we leave her alone. so yeah. and i heard that we just got in a litter of coyote puppies (early this year!) so i'll probably be doing some bottle-feeding tomorrow. yay! also, the little chihuahua/piranha cross that belongs to the managers has finally managed to bite my hand (usually i'm quick enough). it's a good thing that she's old and her teeth are blunt. even so, i had some little bitty bruises to go with the blisters. on the upside, i have gotten to the point where both of our foxes will eat out of my hand now (it only took 2.5 years). surprisingly enough, one of their favorite treats is NutriGrain bars!! Supposedly they're good for people too...

our y-staff soccer league just started up again - we had a practice last saturday, and we have our first game this sunday. most of us are in terrible shape. i think since the last league ended i've done cardio about four times, and i still can't find my shin guards. i'm sure it'll be a blast though, since we're all about the good times, and don't really care that we lose all the time. this way, the teams that are serious about winning will feel good when they beat us.

i still haven't been able to take down the christmas tree. my little baby girl (twilight) LOVES it. she so rarely gives a "poop" about anything that i don't have the heart to take away her fort/hiding place/attacking base/playground/napping cave. i wonder how long it will take for all the needles to fall off.
the other kitties are doing fine. hobbes is going for walks pretty consistently, shadow is trying to learn how to snuggle -he's naturally jumpy, so he'll plop down next to me, and when i raise an arm to reach over an pet him, he jumps, then tries to relax...it's adorable! and balloon got stressed out while we were in washington and pulled a bunch of fur off his back legs, so now it looks like he's wearing spandex instead of his normal baggy pants. i think he's feeling better now though.

world market still hasn't paid me for my accrued vacation time - it should have been on my "final" paycheck three weeks ago. i'm trying to be patient with the company as a whole, since they were good enough to fire satan's evil ex-mistress who made my job there last year so miserable, but i'm getting to the point where i really would like that money. like, now.

in "relative" drama: shaggy's dad had a mini-stroke. he's okay, out of the hospital, and back home within a week. the military, however, thinks that it's serious enough to ship mr. enoch back from germany for a while. which is great, since he just got married, but his wife hadn't been able to move out and join him yet, so now he gets to help her pack.

finally, i get to vent about my stupid relatives. THEY KNOW NOTHING!!! (by the way, the rest of the blog is pretty much just me going on and on about how stupid people won't leave me alone...so if you don't care about my family and their problems, don't waste your time).
back story is that most of us were not close growing up. i never got along with my mom - and that's putting it mildly. i mostly had contact with amy and merdy after i moved out, with david being added to the list after a while. merdy has never been good about keeping in touch (i still have a box of presents i put together 3 christmases ago that i haven't been able to mail because she has not given me a current address since then). amy and i used to call each other and mail boxes of stuff all the time, but eventually the phone calls became i'd call when something cool happened or if i just wanted to talk, and she'd call when she got some new toy/vehicle/pet that she was super excited about and that is hopelessly above my financial capability to ever have. so after a while i got tired of hearing what new stuff she had but listened anyway, and still called her if i wanted to talk or whatever. david went on a mormon mission to florida, and he's still there.
so then, a little over a year ago, we visited shaggy's parents in washington. a week after we got back, i called amy to ask for her husband's address (he was deployed at the time) so i could send him a birthday card. we got to talking, and she said something like, "and then after the funeral, we..." i asked whose funeral, and that's when i learned that my grandma had died while i was in washington. there were no messages on my answering machine, no emails, no letters. nothing. so i sent out a mass-email to all the relatives asking why nobody had bothered to tell me. i got "i told karen to tell all the siblings"(karen being the one to whom i've had to mail a phone card in order for her to call me in the past, and who specifically told people not to tell me when she married a gay man to get him a green card) "i was too busy being pregnant and calling amy to tell her (merdy - i really didn't know that being pregnant disabled one from being able to speak on a telephone)" "because i thought you were out of town and you don't have a cell phone (amy-who has in the past left messages like "call so-and-so as soon as you get this - it's important")" and "WHAT!?! we told your parents we'd fly you out for the funeral if you needed the money help and they said we wouldn't have to do that!!!"(the last one was my aunt). so the next time amy called, i told her that i was mad at her for not telling me. she insisted that she thought i would be out of town until thursday. i pointed out that nobody called me on thursday either, and that, if anyone had bothered to ask april, she has contact information for shaggy's parents (who we were out of town visiting over the weekend). so i could have been gotten in touch with if anyone had tried. the next time my mom called, she told me that she wanted my new address (i had just moved) so that she could send me some things of grandma's. i cracked and gave it to her, only to receive in the mail - a box of THREAD. granted, my grandma used to sew a lot, but unopened spools of thread?!? also some random origami (i know my grandma did not do origami). the point is, i realized how not actually important i am to these people. except as someone to listen to one brag, someone at whose house to crash if one wants to visit california, or someone to whom one corresponds periodically so that when one sends out the "holiday family letter" one only gives semi-wrong information (it's been reported in the past that a) i work at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, b) my last name is thurston, and c) shaggy is in the military, and works border patrol, and uses his spanish-speaking skills to do both of these things.

for some reason, since i stopped reaching out, they all want to contact me now. so what to they do, since i'm not giving out my address and phone number? they've emailed my boss at work. they started sending things to shaggy's mom. they harrass april. they email me all kinds of stupid crap to try to coax me into giving it to someone. "if you just tell me your address, i won't give it to anyone else" and all that baloney. they've even barged into a random ymca near my old apartment and demanded to know where i was. once, they got the manager at the apartment complex where i used to live to call me at work and connect them (bless her for not giving out the number though!). my mom asked when would be a good time for them to come see me, and i suggested fall 2010. my dad asked if we'd like to join them for dinner, and i said, no thanks, we have plenty of food. i didn't think i was being overly subtle, but apparantly i was, since i then got an email apologizing that they'd caught me at a bad time and it's too bad we didn't get to hang out, isn't it? you know what, better yet, i'm gonna paste in the email conversation:

"Dear Linda,

We really showed up at an inconvenient time for you, didn't we? We really had no idea you were moving then. We would have come at a different time, when it was more convenient for you. Mary Ann's household goods arrived the week before, and we came to see you first, to give them time to get settled and unpacked. We could have come to see you at a very different time, if you had told us about the move. We hope next year to be able to see you at a better time for you. We need your address to be able to send you letters and packages. Will you send us your address, please?

Anyway, how do you like the new house..."
me again...
"You really aren't very good at taking hints, are you?
i didn't want to see you. i don't want to see you. i don't plan to send you my address or my phone number. i think it was really low of you to use "grandma's memory" as an excuse to get my address last time, when first of all, you didn't even bother to tell me she had died, and then all you sent for me to "remember her" by was a bunch of thread. thread just isn't much of a memorabilia-type item, y'know? ... leave me alone."

do you think i made myself clear? obviously not, as evidenced by the fact that i got an "invite" to christmas in japan (plane tickets paid and everything) ignoring that did no good:

"Dearest Children,

Please check your passports, to be sure they are still valid. It can take up to two months to get passports, so start NOW if you need to do that. I got mine at the Post Office in Provo. They even took my picture. You need to take your birth certificate and your old passport.

Dad checks the e-mail every day to see if you have your travel dates confirmed, so he can buy the tickets while they are still available and cheap. They are $1069 from most of the airports. Please confirm as soon as possible, like today.

If we can get you all to fly on the same dates, it will be easy to drive a rental van to Tokyo to pick you up..."

(at which point, my italics somehow froze, so everything looks funky)
and me again:
"Fine, you want a response, you got one. I will not go. I do not want to go. Leave me alone."

followed by:

"Dear Children,

I thought you might like to read this from the Daily Gems. You could also subscribe to this easily..."
to which i replied:
"Today's English lesson:
"Leave me alone" does NOT mean:
tell people to waste Aaron's parents time by mailing things to their house.
It also does not mean:
email people at my job and lie about wanting to work there
It also does not mean:
oh, it's okay to send me stupid forward emails.
It actually means that I want you to stop doing all those things...It really means, stay out of my life; I want nothing to do with you.
Leave me Alone!"

Am I starting to sound repetitive? No, oh okay, let's have some more:

Dear Children,

I hope you had a good holiday.

Did you feel like a turkey at the end of Thanksgiving day? we were certainly stuffed!! ... There are enough leftovers to do it all over again.

Dad says, "Do you know what my favorite part of the dinner was? The food!"...

i guess i still wasn't clear enough... sigh.
so yeah. i don't remember if i've blogged enough context for that to make any sense, but i think anyone who's reading (unless you're somehow related to me) will be able to figure out the gist of it...
and now i'm getting emails from crazy merdy (this is her first consistent bout of contact in, oh, EVER!) and first she wanted to visit me, and then she just wanted my address, and then she doesn't really need my address, but just write back, and then "here's a link to an anti-mormon website, whattaya think?" at this point i asked april if merdy thought i was anti, or if she was having issues herself. so the next email says i'm prejudiced and not open to other people's opinions because i'm accusing people of apostasy... and that she really wasn't trying to piss me off, she was just emailing because she thought i didn't want people in the family trying to contact me (yeah, that didn't make much sense to me either) and that she's tired of having to hear about me only through april.
at this point i finally responded by pointing out that if we're talking about poor communication here, she still hasn't told me that she had a baby (Leona is 14 months old).
suddenly, she gives me a ray of hope - the next email says that if i'm going to keep being like this, maybe people will just stop trying to get in touch with me. of course, she then ruins this by saying that david gave up on trying to talk to me a long time ago (he's the ONLY sibling who has my phone number, and the only one i actually email on a semi-regular basis). so if she's hopelessly wrong about that... i don't know.
see why i'm a tad frustrated?

so yeah, really uplifting (and concise) blog, right? i used to write anything depressing in those black and white composition books, but what the hey, i type faster than i write, so maybe i'll be able to sleep sooner if i get it all out this way. also maybe someone will have witty comments that will make it amusing. or maybe just if/when i do end up writing books i'll only have to copy/paste instead of transcribing stuff. it might also be nice to convince myself that i'm not crazy for wanting to be free of these insane people!

and since i always blog about food... let's end on a happy note - i may end up making banana bread this weekend because there are some mottled yellowish-brownish looking bananas on my counter in my kitchen. mmmmm banana bread.