A baby is on the way!

I have so much to talk about I don’t know where to start. I visited my grandmother yesterday and during our discussion she said, “I used to say to myself that one day you would grow up and find out that grandma is not wrong all the time, I am still waiting for you to grow up.” I laughed so hard that tears streamed out of my eyes. I even had to write it down. It was so funny and so true. I had just said to her, “Grandma, I know everything” in response to her questioning my choices.

Now for my big news, I am getting a baby!! Brittany called me this morning and said a 7 week old baby was abandoned at her work today and did I want it. I have been thinking about getting another baby, but I have been reluctant to commit for many reasons. The main one was I did not want to risk my heart again, when I lost my Frodo so suddenly in 2003 it hurt so much I did not want to love anything again. And then slowly I started losing my Willow, it hurts too; she is still around but not mine anymore. I also don’t believe in buying babies, I think it encourages irresponsible breading. I wanted a lab baby ~ 7 to 8 weeks old; even though I said I was ready for a baby almost a year ago given my limitations I haven’t made the plunge until today. I pick up my new baby tomorrow; she is getting fixed so I can’t get her earlier.

I am told that she is a 7 week old Weimaraner Labrador mix. I am concerned about the Weimaraner part; they are known from the behavior disorders, but I am hoping the Labrador wins out in the personality war. I already called the puppy sitters and they are just excited as I am to get this new bundle of fur. I will take many pictures and show her to you as soon as she arrives. I wonder what I will call her, any suggestions?

Imaginary Boyfriend

I have imaginary boyfriends (IB) at work. It is entertaining for me and my male co-workers. My ex-boyfriend is a beautiful man with obnoxiously long eyelashes and the best set of eyes I have seen in a long time. In fact he is almost every woman’s imaginary boyfriend around her, he is that good looking. He is also smart and creative. My BAW and the Kid teased me all the time about my “ex-boyfriend” claiming he was too young for me. That I was robbing the cradle, even hints of pedophilia; let me be clear my ex-IB is the same age as I am. They just like to tease me about being old. However I found out my IM had a family and he instantly became ex-IB. I can’t even have an imaginary boyfriend with children. It is just one of my things, no kids. Not in real life and not even in imaginary life. I like children, that is the reason I don’t think it is appropriate to date someone with children. I don’t like the idea a disturbing or complicating a child’s life by dating their fathers. I know that families don’t always stay together but I can’t be the evil (or even not so evil) woman that replaces their mother.

I am constantly on the lookout for a new IB. I have one right now but I am not super excited about him. I think I should be really excited about my IB, considering he is imaginary. My current IB is dating a woman that I really don’t like and it makes him a whole lot less attractive in my mind. You might remember her from My Territory post. Though now that I think about it, turn about is fair play. My new group of friends includes my IB and doesn’t include his girlfriend (she is universally disliked). Oh no! I just realized she is going to be meaner to me than she was before. Looks like I currently without an IB…. sigh…. Feel for me friends.

Losing Weight!

I am losing weight, and it has nothing to do with exercising or consciously dieting. I am still exercising, but not up to everyday yet or even an hour at a time. It has to do with my new friend. I have already mentioned her a few times, but it is time to give her a name. I am going to call her Elle, for reason that I don’t want to disclose here. Elle is a scientist too but not a physicist. She is size 2 and bless her heart she thinks we are the same size (she is obviously in need of corrective eye surgery). However a size 2 body is very difficult to maintain past the age of 21 (and we are all that). So Elle exercises and eats like a little bird. I have been spending so much time with her that I have adopted some of her habits, mainly we don’t eat nearly as much as I do when I am alone, and the results are great.

For whatever reason I am hungry all the time, I am hungry now, an hour after breakfast. I will have a mid-morning snack and still be hungry, and then I will have lunch and be starving an hour after that. I have tried almost everything to curb my hunger, protein rich diets, multivitamins, drinking more water. I know it is physiological. I am not really hungry all the time; I am not depriving myself of vital nutrients and calories. In fact the reason I exercise so much because I am getting way too many calories than I should in a day. Now that I am spending time with Elle, it is easier to eat less and the results are great. Though I know that my eating is the reason I don’t lose the weight. I have no real control over what I eat; it is good to be a part of a friendship where the control is no longer in my hands. What I really need is a life partner that doesn’t eat too much and eats the right things. I think that is going to go on the list, right below, loves to read.

Not Ready to Say Goodbye

I spent Sunday with my grandmother; I spend every Sunday with her. When I talked to her mid-week she told me her physical therapist took her on a walk. I arrived Sunday afternoon in the mist of a beautiful spring day, the sun was shinning, the snow melted and it was a warm 70 F. I love the summer, I love the sun, I am of the garden variety and can only grow when the sun shines and the weather is warm. I suggested a walk to my grandmother, and she accepted. She has never been able to refuse me anything, and it has worked to my advantage more than once. She held onto her Hugo and we started on our walk. We walked to the end of her retirement community and then started back. Half way back she faltered, our walk nearly exhausted her. We had to stop and I thought, oh $hit I have put my grandmother at risk for a fall. When we reached the common area she had to sit down for 30 minutes before she had the strength to return to her apartment.

I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know how I missed it, but my grandmother has gotten really old. I see her every week, and it just kind of surprised me. I kept thinking that she was going to bounce back from age and come home. I kept seeing her as the constant in my future children’s life like she was the constant in my life. Right then and there I realized that I am not ready to let go of her, and I don’t have a lifetime to say goodbye to her. Now I can’t help but feel bad for all the times I pulled away from her when she wanted me to hold her hand while we walked through the store. Or the times I wouldn’t kiss her goodbye when she dropped me off at dance practice. All those little unkind things from me and never once was she late picking me up afterwards.

A few weeks ago we talked about me and my terrible teenaged ways, I reminded her of our mornings together. I am not a morning person, not then and not now, and she is a morning person. Every morning I would stagger into the kitchen all grim and gruff and she would be talking 8 million words a minute. It was all I could do not to strangle her; I did bite her head off from time to time. She would have my morning juice ready for me, strained because I hated pulp and they didn’t sell pulp free (my age is showing). I would drink my juice, take my vitamins and my grandfather would take me to school, in silence which I needed. We talked about that, she remembered the juice, the vitamins, the ride but not that I was bear in the morning. I hope now that it is close to the end of my time with her that she only remembers the good times.

Random Thoughts

Well sports fans I am in first place after 16 teams played yesterday. I know absolutely nothing about college basketball and I never watch a regular season game but I love March madness! I actually love competing in anything; it brings out the best and worst in me. I love to win and I hate to lose and I hate doing anything I am terrible at. Fortunately I am athletic and the only thing I completely fail at is golf. Speaking of golf I forgot to mention the crazy Ladies Association at the golf club made me vice-president this year. I tried to remind them I am not a good golfer, in fact golf is evil. I have not missed it at all this winter. I am going to the driving range this evening to attempt to get a little better at the horrible game of golf. The only good news concerning golf is I am going to look first-rate on the golf course this year; I bought Callaway’s Big Bertha clubs with a matching purple golf bag.


I am also bound and determined to lose weight this year. This is a picture taken 2 weeks ago and I want to lose around 20 pounds (15 pounds according to my home scale and 20 according to the gym’s scale). I am going to start with an hour a day at the gym, right now I am getting 90 minutes a week. To be honest I have had this goal for a while and I am not making any progress. I have been thinking about going to weight watchers but all my friends think that they will turn me in for having some type of body image disorder. The thing is I could lose 20 pounds and I would not look too skinny, it is one of the benefits of being so tall. I can gain 10 lbs and the only person who can tell is me, I have so many places to hide it in 5’9” that I still look fine. BUT I would look so much better to myself if I lost the weight. I am also bound and determined to lose weight this year.

Another great lunch

Cassanova gave me a Casino game today. He heard that I enjoy gambling and gave me a hand held game thingy. It is hard to believe that this man is still single…. I wonder why some woman has not snatched him off the market.

I had lunch with my new group of friends again today and it was great. The lunch initially started with work talk, which I have to admit was my fault. The ring leader was sick of that talk almost immediately and asked the question “What was the naughtiest thing you did this weekend?” The man (let’s call him the second best looking guy here or second of short) that this question was posed too asked if it was going to go around the table before he answered, and received an affirmative. We were all laughing so hard and he answered something noncommittal but didn’t involve the bedroom. By the time the question was thrown my way I couldn’t answer because I had a mouthful of food. As you can guess the question did not go away, but I honestly answered; nothing. I did have Sara here this weekend and we are not that kind of friends, not that there is anything wrong with it!!

We were in a cafeteria frequented by all of our VPs, and they all came to talk to us, and I thought could almost see the envy in their eyes that they weren’t joining in our fun. We laughed the entire lunch. It was great, again.

Tubing with Sara

This weekend Sara was here and it was great to have her! She is my shopping friend. I have friend I go dancing with, friends I drink with and of course I shop with other friends but I “connect” with Sara’s shopping style. We both like the same stores, we both like to shop the sales and we both spend a lot of money when we shop.

BUT before we went shopping we went tubing. I took Sara to my mountain where they have a tubing hill, with tubes for rent and a tow rope up the mountain (the tubing track is in the lower portion of the picture). I had seen the hill from one of the chair lifts from afar but this was my first experience up close and personal with the hill.

We arrived at the mountain to a beautiful day, it was perfect skiing weather. The sun was shinning, the snow soft and forgivable, no crowds (it was a weekday). We bypassed the ski lifts and purchased a few hours on the hill. We promptly sat our bottoms on the tube and started up the hill. The first thing I noticed was we were the only adults on the hill without children. The next thing I noticed was there was no slope to the hill, or at least not comparatively. When we arrived at the top of the hill I was ready to go! Sara on the other hand was 10 feet from the edge tip-toeing to see down the hill. I was right on the edge ready to race down. After 5 minutes (or so it seemed) of convincing her it was OK to go down the hill she shuffled a few feet closer and sat down, stuck. I saw this one coming too; she was too far from the actual slope. She slowly started inching (on her butt) her way forward and at this time I thought if she sees me go down and survive she’ll be more confident.

Down I went and it was entertaining, not exciting, not dangerous, and not fast but fun nonetheless, and reluctantly Sara came after me. I went right over and was towed up the hill again, with Sara behind me. She went down a little faster the second time and the third time she proudly announced that she went all the way down with her eyes open that time! By the end of our time, she was trying to spin her tube on the way down, taking a running start and riding down without holding on! She was also throwing snow balls at me; I probably deserved it for teasing her about being a chicken.

Great Lunch

I am starting to like the middle of nowhere a whole lot more. Today I had lunch with some new people and they were my type of people. I was really starting to believe that there was no one like me out here! The conversation at lunch was laugh out loud funny and full of random crazy stories. I related my Easter story of last year, which was well received.

Easter Sunday (2006) arrived and I was feeling very sorry for myself, with no friends and family around. I did not find eggs in the morning nor was I surprised by an Easter basket when I awoke. Everyone I knew was spending the day with family, while I was completely alone. I tried to surf the net, I tried to read, I cleaned the house to offset how retched I felt. Nothing was working and I was spiraling into increasing bouts of self pity. Then around 1 pm two very hot young men knocked on my door with a small Easter basket and wanting to share their beliefs with me. Now I don’t normally do this, but I was feeling terrible and seriously I was trapped by my own self pity, I really didn’t have a choice.

I stood on the doorstep talking with the young men for about 30 minutes about religion. Thirty minutes stretched on and I invited the men in; now I know something about this particular religion and I knew they were not allowed in my house. I being a woman living alone with no man about the house, but they came in nonetheless. I flirted, argued, tried to convert them, and had a glorious time over the next 2 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was completely entertained by these young men. I drank a couple of glasses of wine, which they politely refused, too. I think I made some serious head way in converting them too. When they left I felt great. I felt like myself again, no more wallowing in self pity, no more lamenting on what I missed, I was great again. I headed out that evening with friends; my only regret was I didn’t pull up my shirt and ask those nice young men what they thought of my girls. Now that would have definitely converted them!

Life Plan

Everyone claims to write a life plan, and considering all the writing I do I still have not written a comprehensive life plan. I keep getting advice from mentors to include my personal goals in life too. I have written a work plan which is much easier to do than to write a life plan. The main problem with writing a life plan is I don’t know what I want from my personal life; okay I do know but I am not sure that it is realistic. It is like saying I want to stay young and beautiful forever, there is no way to accomplish this goal. I also have conflicting goals.

I want to be a CEO of a moderate sized company ~ 10,000 employees, and in order to do so it would be really difficult to be a mother, but I wouldn’t mind having one child. I want a partner in my life that treats me great and is dependable, responsible, attractive and makes my heart do flip flops (oh and great in the bedroom). I also need a man whom I respect and have the same values as I do. If I located this perfect guy I would like to have one child with him, but in my experience I can’t find both, I find the responsible, dependable, trustworthy ones and they don’t make my stomach do back flips. I find the ones that make my blood boil and my heart race but they lack some very basic qualities that I need in a man. So I am thinking of settling, and I don’t think the first sentence in my life plan should be I plan on settling for a guy that I don’t really want. Hence my dilemmas in writing a life plan.

I also find that with work and family that I don’t have time to do the things that I enjoy already and I am childless. I don’t have time to go dancing, skiing or other physical things I enjoy. I am also currently living in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have the opportunity to participate in other things I enjoy. I have given work the highest priority in my life and I don’t regret it right now but I am afraid one day I might.

Book Meme

Izzy Bella tagged me, so I guess I'm it.

I read a lot, I don’t watch television, I don’t have children and I love to read. Reading is my third favorite thing to do just behind sleeping and eating. Having said that I read everything, literary classics, historical novels (fiction and non-fiction), biographies, foreign language books, best sellers but my heart and soul belongs to the fantasy world. I know I am reinforcing the geeky scientist here, but it does and I can’t deny it. Ninety percent of the books I read are fantasy so most of you will probably never heard of the following characters.

Character you'd most like to have over for tea? I would like to say Elizabeth I, but I know she is not really a character, so Gandalf the Gray, the white was too changed or Tom Bombadil.

Character you'd most like to have as a sibling? Too many modern novels have horrible sibling rivalries in them; I don’t understand this having no such problems with my sisters. So I would have to go with a classical character like Elizabeth Bennett, but sticking with the fantasy genre Sabriel.

Character you'd most like to be friends with? I love mischief and I am usually the instigator but I would like a partner in crime so Stephanie Plum would fit the bill and from the fantasy world Ghost (a dire wolf) or Arya.

Character you'd most like to have as a cousin? Any elf because that would make me an elf too, hey this is not my meme! Galadriel would fit.

Character you'd most like to have an adventure with? Pug and Tomas from the Feist books they are bad arse. I also agree with Izzy Bella; Fred and George Weasley.

Favorite quirky character? Tasselhoff Burfoot he is laugh out loud funny from the original Dragon Lance Books, or Fisbane, who periodically shows up in the Weiss and Hickman books.

Favorite love-to-hate character? Oh come on this one is too easy Gollum, “what it’s got in its nassty little pocketses?”

Favorite bad guy? I have to comment to Izzy Bella here, Snape is evil and not Dumbledore’s man. No one who hates a young kid like Snape hates Harry could possible be anything but evil.

My favorite bad guy? Artemis comes to mind.

And the category ChaucerianGirl added:Character to whom you've most often been compared? I know who I would like to be compared to a confident, smart, daring and powerful character, but in reality it is probably Beverly Donofrio, who is a real person. I am often compared to one or both of the Gilmore Girls, but no one compares me to a book character.

TAGGING TIME: I tagging Joy and in the word’s of Izzy Bella, Just because and she reads my blog.