Starting Again?

Well... I'm starting over. I think. I'll keep the old posts here for background, but maybe this'll give me something to do. I hope I can keep it up this time. I'm a procrastinator... we'll see :)

We've watched Julie & Julia twice. Once in the theater, and once just tonight. If you haven't seen it, read it or heard of it, it's basically this Julie person (Julie Powell) changing her life around by taking a year and cooking everyone one of Julia Child's recipes in 1 year. It's a good movie. And it got me thinking.

I'm unemployed. Both me and Rick are. Beyond job searching, not doing housework (I did say I'm a procrastinator) and sitting on the computer... what do I do with my day? Not a heckuva lot. Used to be WoW (World of Warcraft). It still may be again. My time-card ran out in Feb, so I've had to do other stuff. I'm getting better at housework... but playing OTHER games. Reading. Watching TV. We dealt with our dog dying... that's another story... but what do I do? Both of us sit here doing as little as possible, and not much else. I want to hopefully do something else.

So... I'm going to start this again... put out my thoughts, and how things are, day by day. Hopefully it'll be every day. Hopefully I won't fight everyday with Rick LOL . Hopefully I'll get other stuff done too... but hell, it's a start, isn't it?

So starting over... again, again. *smile* What thoughts are going through my head today? Lots, actually.... and what did I actually do? Not much LOL

The ground's thawed, at least. I was able to shovel and rake the backyard. No more dog poop. It needed to be done. I've been putting it off. Rick asked for US to do it on Wednesday. We didn't. I was dizzy as hell this aft when I got around to it but I wanted to go outside, I wanted to so something, and I pushed through it. I'm glad it's done. Two garbage bags full of leaves and branches etc... well 4, as they were doubled. LOL It was bittersweet however... weird, what thoughts go through you're mind when you're cleaning up dog poop... and I'm going to start crying. Let me give you a backstory...

In 2005 when I started this blog, we had ONE dog. Perrin. Christmas of that year, we got our second dog, Tripp. For the past 4 years, we had two dogs, and two cats.... and then Tripp got sick in January. I won't go into all the gory details... but we couldn't afford to do the extreme measures to treat him and find out what was wrong with him... so we did what we could. Medication wasn't working. Steroids weren't working... so on February 24th, 2010, we decided to put him down and stop his suffering. That was a very hard day. There was still snow on the ground.... he's been cremated, and when we can pay Tammy back, as she lent us the money for the ashes, we'll get them.

So... long story slightly shorter.... this is the first time I cleaned the dog poop out of the backyard since he died. I had tried mid-Feb when we had a slight thaw, but couldn't get a lot off. It was hard... harder now that I think about it. It's like I was wiping the last vestiges of Tripp from the backyard. It's more difficult to remember him now... but I force myself to. We loved him; love him still. We put a nice picture in a frame up in the hall by his favourite sunning spot. I don't think I've swept up since he died either, beyond the kitchen floor. But cleaning the dog poop? Who ever thought it would make you cry?

Rick made a really good dinner tonight. I did have to unload the dishwasher, and reload it to make room in the kitchen to actually do anything. But we had gotten a couple steaks from the discount section in the meat dept ($5 a steak can't be wrong!!), and Rick pounded them and sprinkled tenderizer on them. Then he cut up the potatoes and the garlic... I put them in 2 pots and added the water and put them on to boil. As an afterthought, threw in some corn in the microwave to at least have a veggie... then he fried the steaks. It was a great meal.

One thing with being home all the time, and being completely broke, is we're not eating out. Hardly at all. We're getting discount meat to throw in the freezer, and then looking for recipes on how to cook it. We've gotten some use out of appliances and gadgets we've hardly ever used before. We're cutting our portion sizes, well HAVE cut them, by half. Sometimes less :) Don't know about Rick (as he's afraid to step on the scales) but I've lost 40 pounds. Was at 35. Weighed myself again this morning and I'm down another 5. I'm past my goal to get my hair done LOL Now I just have to be able to afford it!!

Have a job interview on Monday. It's in Mississauga. It'll take me about 2.5 hours to get there... and it's at 9:30 in the morning. Meaning I have to leave about 6:30, just to be safe. I am NOT a morning person. I've had a lot of interviews since being laid off (in June) but nothing has panned out. Frakking sucks. :(( But what can you do? Hopefully this one will be the good one... if not... well, I'll just carry on :)

We're going through family stuff with Rick's family right now. I won't go into details but it's stressing us out. Almost more so then the stuff with Lee-Ann. At least my sister ignore's me. But my other sister is getting married in June. To a guy named Ryan. He's nice enough and treats her well, and Mary seems happy so I can't really complain. I think I may be kind of a snob though. I'm trying not to look down on her (well it's not hard when I'm 6' tall and she's less than 5' LOL) but it's hard when she's getting all the reception stuff from the dollar store, and if my Mom can't make the bridal bouquets then they're going to get a bouquet from the supermarket... ok... a wedding on a budget is one thing. But there are ways to make it LOOK like you give a damn instead of being so cheap it's noticeable. I will admit that Mom did make Mary's bouquet, posted a pic on Facebook and it's very pretty. And fake flowers aren't all THAT bad... But it LOOKS fake. I'm almost afraid to see Mary's dress... I feel like a shit, but I can't help HOW I feel... I hope she's happy with it, and hopefully in 90 days she'll stop talking about it. By then she'll be Mrs Mary Mark. Fuck. I hope she doesn't read this.

Running out of things to say. Maybe next week I'll be about to get us a new WoW card. Then I'll have something constructive to do :) I miss my rogue... :(

Signing off for now. When I have more random thoughts, I'll let you know :)

Vicky