I'm curious (as I usually am since I seem to find the inner workings of your brain fascinating) how you would answer this:

What is your role?

I will not qualify that question in any way. I'm serious about wanting to hear your answers, so leave a comment here, email me, chat with me...whatever you wish. I'll write a post later this week or early next with my own take on it.

Quick nerdy knitter post; I've got my first FO of 2010! FO = finished object for non-knitters. And I made it in January, huzzah! Meet the farmer's market bag that took almost a year and may never be used (though it hangs nicer than I expected...so maybe, just maybe):

If you've been around this blog for a while, you know how highly I value snail mail. I love real letters, handwritten, creeping through the USPS, even to those living less than half an hour away. I think there's something amazing about handwriting. Today two things made me think of my love for a solid piece of real mail, so I thought I'd share:

1. This valentine's card round up. While most of them are interesting and some of them appeal to me, that first one? Swoon. Folded, sealed with wax? Be still my heart. What a lovely idea. And, at some point, I'm going to have such a large collection of letterpress cards (I have a special weakness for simple letterpress ala this mini delight) that I'm going to have to start giving cards to loml, family and friends whenever i see them. I love paper.
2. An article in Reader's Digest about someone who collects love letters. Apparently the old RD doesn't put it's articles online in a timely fashion or I'd link it here. Where is the blog of love letters found? Does that exist? Love letters are quirky and fun and amazing - it's almost the same kind of fun, reading them, as PostSecret. Except love letters are almost universally happy.

I've said before that letter writing is a dying art - I hate that - so I'll continue to put my two letters a week in the mail and pretend that it's not. And maybe I'll flirt with the idea of writing love notes. maybe.

It is absolutely counterproductive to stop at America's Dog on the way home from the gym. But it sure is delicious. And I figure it will put a positive spin on my "return to the gym" day. And a painful spin on tomorrow's gym trip.

And wow that gym was packed. I ended up on a machine that was right up against the balcony. And I'll just say, I am not woman enough to work out on a machine where I look down to the floor below. I had to concentrate, hard, to not feel like I was going to fall. I mean, technically, I was running in the direction of the "cliff" (alright, not running, ellipticalling). I will never do that again.

Over my winter break (my work closes down for a week and a half to save money on electricity), I took some time to reorganize my bookshelf. The shelves contain:

1. Books
2. Books
3. Knitting and stamping supplies
4. Old school work (Do I continue to keep it? For now, i did. But why?)
5. Miscellaneous crafting supplies

I look over there happily now. But since then, I've been craving some way to use all the stuff. An outlet. I started my 2010 semantics project and am mostly annoyed by it. I need to figure out how to modify or kill that project. I love words so much that I thought that would be enough to make me enjoy it. But mostly I'm just blah. Hate it.

Lately I've been thinking that i need some kind of journal swapping project. Like color books of yore. Only not so themed and not with multiple people. Anyone interested in doing something of that sort with me? No idea what exactly...

Dear pants,

Why you gotta be so tight?

Love,
Katie

***

I know everyone in the world hates the resolution filled January gym, but dear me, it's time to get rid of the winter spare tire. I was telling DC today that my ass looks great in my pants because my muffin top is pulling them so tight. I'm not going to the gym early this week, I'm thinking about starting Wednesday - maybe there will be less of my kind crowding the ellipticals.

2009, in retrospect, was a year of change for me. This year:

• My job changed. And in a lot of ways my feelings about work and my workplace changed. The change should have been such that it felt like I quit my last job and started anew. It hasn't materialized like that...but there is a piece of me that hopes 2010 brings that change.
  
• I wasn't blogging at the beginning of the year, and here I am again.
• Sometime at the end of 2008, I started to fall off of all of my hobbies. In the last year I have finished a sad total of 3 knitting projects: all three of which should have been super quick knits (socks, a hat and fingerless gloves). I had a layer of apathy sitting heavily on top of me. I think that's gone now - I reorganized my knitting/crafting area and I feel like that burden is lifted. I have 3 projects going at the moment, 2 more ready to go and 3 in the planning stages. I'm also hoping to start a different sort of project tomorrow using one of my christmas presents, a journal. The idea isn't fully formed but it basically just involves words, not writing, more like semantics. I heart semantics. Anyway, we'll see how short lived that is. But, 2009 was the year of hobby death. Hopefully in these very last moments it also contains a spark of renewal.
• And obviously my personal life changed this year. loml is around now. That change was kind of hilariously rocky at the beginning. I think that's another lesson to myself: how I'm not so graceful - I wanted that change and yet didn't handle it all that well for quite some time.

So what do I hope for in 2010? Basically what I mentioned above: work to become what I hope it to be, writing to continue, hobbies to continue as they are from the past few weeks and to pick up speed and I'd like loml to stick around. I'd like 2010 to be a year for settling into the change of 2009.

Happy New Year all! What do you hope for in 2010?

Happy Holidays!

It's been a really nice season so far - I've already had a few lovely mini celebrations (all involving food, of course) and we have lots of snow here. It doesn't really feel like actual Christmas celebrations start tomorrow, and at the same time it feels like it's Christmastime. Full of Jingles and cheer. And I'm about to wrap all my presents, which is one of my favorites - I love this part.

Tomorrow is the extended family celebration, which I look forward to every year. loml and I are doing everything separately this year, which is a bit sad...and at the same time, doesn't really change my feelings about the next two days. I really enjoy being with the family and all the laughs and food...love this time of year. Heart.

I hope everyone out there has a lovely holiday and a happy new year.

I am about to do something that I have found very hard to do so far...that is...tell you about loml in a happy way. There is something about writing a self-satisfied blog post that gives me chills. I don't want anyone to read a post I write and think: that bitch is smug. So I'm going to try to walk on this very thin ice - between writing a happy post and being smug. And if I fail, call me out.

loml and I just hit six months. Strangely, a lot of that time it felt like it all wasn't really happening and so six months came really quickly and yet...it feels like we've been together longer than that. And so I would like to just tell you all how lucky I feel (most of the time) to be going through all of this messy relationship stuff with loml. I'm extremely inexperienced at all of it and I tend to over-analyze and he's a peach for putting up with it.

I just deleted a whole paragraph about how I am sometimes needy and loml also handles that like a peach - but then i deleted it because listing all of my faults and saying loml is awesome for putting up with them is a pretty sorry happy post. We put up with each other - it's becoming obvious that all relationships that succeed are based on people being uniquely suited to handle the other ones tricky bits. And yes, I kind of like that that sounds dirty. I like loml's tricky bits, even though it's often maddening, frustrating and full of lots of nuggets to over-analyze. And I sort of hope he likes mine...or if nothing else, he likes making me squirm while he picks on mine.

You're a peach loml.

Yesterday I had a bit of a mishap involving a bread knife and my left middle finger. Basically I cut part of my nail/finger instead of the pita I was cutting. I've been asked for details:

I'm still not entirely sure how I managed the cut, I was slicing circles of pita into triangles and suddenly I was staring at the cut on my fingernail waiting for it to bleed. You know those 30 seconds of shock where it doesn't hurt and doesn't bleed? I spent those wishing it wouldn't start bleeding at all. That it was just a little cut in my nail...

Then it started to gush. I wandered a bit in a panic, trying to figure out if I knew of an urgent care in the area. I came to the conclusion I did not and so googled the closest hospital. I grabbed a cab with my bloody wad of paper towels. On the way I texted loml to tell him of my ER visit. I was cutting up the pita for a party we were attending...so I told him if he wanted to get there at the beginning of the party he would need to go without me. My cabbie dropped me off at the hospital, and proceeded to chastise me about how it's rude to ask your cabdriver to take you to side streets. Because its impossible to find another fare. Yeah.

So, I get to the ER, sign in. There's maybe two people ahead of me, a few more come in after. I wait probably 30 minutes before I'm called back. The nurse immediately goes to find a tetanus shot and stabs me with it. My doctor shows up - and is a more obviously gay version of Neil Patrick Harris (quite lovable). He says he wants to take off the sliced piece of the nail, to make sure I haven't cut really deep. Proceeds to numb my finger with two shots. The shots themselves hurt and then burned. Once the stuff was in me, everyone left me in a room to get numb and I proceeded to react weirdly to the numbing agent. First, I got boiling hot - sheen of sweat over my whole body style. Followed by nausea, dizziness and a distinct feeling of being a bit high. This all faded and led to a lightly numb finger - I think cute gay doctor made a bit of a tactical error - the base of my finger is where he shot me. And it was numb. But the tip? Only lightly numb. So when he cut off my nail? Possibly one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me. Applying pressure to stop the bleeding? Also horrible. Antiseptic spray before bandage application? Burningly horrible.

All in all, painful. I left with a heavily bandaged finger tip that can't handle pressure. I didn't come away with any plan as to when I should remove the bandage. And I have a sinking feeling that when I do remove it I am going to relive some of that pain all over again.

My cab driver on the ride home was much nicer than the first- wished me a happy holidays. Then I got to spend the evening holiday partying and making loml do things he didn't want to because it would make me feel better. Happy six months loml, wasn't that a fun way to observe the passage of time?

Christmas tree time...

Right when I got home from work, I put together 3 of the 4 parts (scratching the shit out of myself in the process). I plugged them in just to make sure all was right with the lights. A full strand was out on the third part....so I took a break, defeated. No amount of shaking of the branches/playing with the wires was working. Just now, I looked over at the tree and the strand was fixed. The only variable? Mona, chewing on the tree. Now I'm hoping for another miracle on the top/fourth part of the tree....apparently not so reliable pre-lit tree....

I just almost burned down my apartment. I lit a candle, to take away the tree smell (it smells a bit like stale smoke...sorry mom). I opened up my new tree topper, set the package on the table...it toppled onto the candle and I almost had a disaster. It smells worse than the tree in here now, and I'm probably ruining my lungs. Ugh burning plastic...

***

It's several hours later and there's still a dead spot in my tree lights. I shook the branches in vain...but i did manage to get my tree topper to almost fall on my head. Missed me by an inch.

Time to let this day go.

Last week I was challenged to write a post that wasn't full of talk of my flaws and whining; mostly because I challenged the challenger to eat a piece of humble pie. And so I raise him this post.

***

This weekend somehow turned out to be the perfect mixture of nothingness, accomplishment and fun. It generally ends up, when I have plans or need to get stuff done, that Sunday night rolls around and I feel like I didn't get any time to actually rest. That it went by in a blur. Not so, this.

I did nothing Friday night after work, but was in a considerable amount of back pain (lessened at this point) so laying on the couch was preferable. Saturday I ran a ton of errands with my sister (and came home with far more stuff than expected) and then had dinner/drinks/shopping with my girls. And today I've done nothing. Well, ok, I cleaned the litter, did some other chore-type things, but mostly I've been making a dent in my couch. Apparently my perfect weekend can be summed up by: nothing, busy saturday, nothing. A formula to copy.

***

Challenger specifically requested that I write about loml and I and how it is going. I have nothing to complain about, it is going brilliantly. The only hitch in the whole thing is this. Yeah, I know, I don't have a daughter, but that yahoo answer is pretty hilarious. And, clearly, Mona hates him because we FIGHT and YELL at each other all the time. Or maybe she's just a good judge of character. Kidding, kidding.

But yeah, loml and I just got back from a trip to Vegas that was lovely. Relaxing, tasty and entertaining. It's not so interesting to write posts about contentment. But I'll continue to try.

I was thinking with my lady parts...

Tonight I feel like I was finally rewarded for tivo'ing Parks and Recreation. I laughed! And so I shall share. Amy Poehler is covering up for someone, making up a story about how she accidentally shot someone in the back of the head.

Um, I let my emotions get the best of me.
I, just, I cared too much I guess.
I was thinking with my lady parts.
I was walking and I felt something icky.
I thought there was gonna be chocolate.
I don't even remember.
I'm wearing a new bra and it closes in the front so it popped open and threw me off.
All I want to do is have babies.
Are you single?
I'm just going through a thing right now.
I guess when my life is incomplete I want to shoot someone.
This would not happen if i had a penis.
What?
Bitches be crazy.
I'm good at tolerating pain, I'm bad at math and I'm stupid.

Only funny bit so far. Sorry parks and rec, but you kind of suck.

What I ate today, chronologically:

• Krispy Kreme donut
• Cinnabon
• Couple of handfuls of Goldfish
• Southwest Peanut package
• More goldfish
• 3 Jingles (or, actually, Santa's Favorites)
• Large Arby's curly fries, with cheese
• Honey Fluff donut

I should keel over any minute now from malnutrition. Strangest bit of it all is that I was not overly hungry at any point during the day.

I feel like I should cover my face in pimples for a Halloween costume. OH WAIT, did that.

Then I image searched to see if a pimple halloween costume exists and nearly gagged when I saw this. I'm not joking, so don't click that link if you know what's good for you.