MFA Mama

social media-y goodness, and some stuff you should do/join/try [ETA]

Figure One: It has no soul.

 

   If you like garden porn and don't already follow me on the Instagram, you are missing out.

   If you like free stuff and have yet to join Swagbucks and started searching with it, you're REALLY missing out (and so am I, because I'd get a referral credit, but mostly you--I just cashed in some Swagbucks for an Amazon.com gift card YESTERDAY).

   If you aren't a member of eBates yet, you should totally join AND USE IT, because look:

Figure Two: This is why you want to join eBates! Also because you love me and want me to get credit for referring you.

   And if you join BOTH then sometimes you will search for eBates' site with Swagbucks, win eleven SBs for the search, and then find out that your favorite store is today's daily double and you will be motherfucking THRILLED.

   Now if you'll excuse me, I am way behind on my sleep, and work is nuts, and WHY WAS TODAY NOT FRIDAY? I CALL SHENANIGANS.

   How are all of YOU?

 

ETA: See comments section for an answer to WTF IS THAT THING UP TOP???

bullets! we haven't had those in a while!

*   I think I have that post-steroid taper depression thing going on. It sucks.

*   Today a red beverage exploded on me at work and drenched my shirt, my newest pair of pants, THE PURSE, and The Precious. To say I was not amused would have been an understatement; this motherfucking beverage basically assaulted every non-living thing I hold dear. I nearly cried, especially after Googling said beverage and finding that it is notorious for exploding on people and staining things indelibly. Fortunately, the Otterbox saved The Precious and Oxiclean saved everything else. YAY, OXICLEAN! BOO, SPARKLING ICE BLACK RASPBERRY WITH EXTRA RED #40! 

*   To try and shake myself out of the doldrums (and burn off angst from some fuckery on the part of the men of the planet) (The XY is being a tool and Hotter has lately confused his role as the resident Jackass Whisperer with being the resident Jackass Advocate), I started the Couch to 10k workout program today. YAY, RUNNING! Unfortunately, BOO, COUCH TO 10K! I found the app (a NON-FREE one, no less!) to be anything BUT user-friendly, and ended up programming the intervals it seemed to be suggesting for Day One, Week One into Runkeeper (which is free, which would seem to defeat the purpose of paying for Couch to 10K). You win some, you lose some, I guess. The good news is, I went running (or run-walk-run-walk-run-walkOMGing) and did not die. My legs felt alright. My lungs were a little bitchy. I had way too much jiggle going on. But I did it!

*   I was ready for it to be Friday yesterday. 

*   Chia seeds are my new favorite thing ever. SO delicious. I mentioned this on the facespace and people's reactions were divided between "HELL YEAH!" and "what do you do with them?" So yeah, you put them in smoothies or float them in beverages (I like them in kefir, both the milk and the water kinds). If you float them in beverages they swell up and sort of en-goo-ify to a tapioca consistency. So if you are skeeved out by tapioca they are not for you, but I happen to love the stuff! Textural bliss aside, the things are packed with Omega 3s and fiber.

*   k mentioned today on the Twitter that she wanted a soda fountain, a Murphy bed, and a butler for her office. Doesn't that just sound fabulous? I think I would like the same.

*   Condescending Wonka is cracking me up. The Northface jacket one is a classic, but this one may just be my favorite. Of course, this one is kind of awesomely meta...

*   I have a post brewing about my hatred of Banfield Pet Hospital...but I'm pissy enough today without getting into all of that hot mess.

*   Like right now? My ex-husband is sweating my jock via rather aggressively via text message about my youngest's shoes, which he claims are irreparably damaged. He wants to know when I am going to buy the child more shoes. I want to see the shoes before I answer that question, and possibly augment them with some duct tape as a stopgap measure. EVERYONE WANTS DIFFERENT THINGS, OH THE HUMANITY.

*   I noticed last night that Isis appears to be down one nipple as a result of her recent surgery, and it irks the hell out of me. Not because she has any use for ANY of her nipples or because of the symmetry so much as because THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HER NIPPLE, WHY TAKE IT OFF? Maybe I need to simmer the hell down with my feminism when it gets to the point of anthropomorphosization and body outrage by proxy, but MY DOG WAS ROBBED. Thank you to everyone from the Twitter who expressed their condolences regarding this horrible travesty. We are attempting to move past it as a family.

*   How are all of YOU?

Ass Wednesday

*   There is nothing quite like finding out you've been fucking ROBBED before 6 a.m. to start your day off shitty. Well okay, not technically robbed, but apparently Temp Agency #1 reset everyone's W-4 status to "single, no exemptions" as of Valentine's Day for who-knows-what-reason and I was supposed to know to refile my tax forms? I don't know. What I do know is that my paycheck this week was light by about 20%, which? UNACCEPTABLE.

*   Don't tell me I'll get it back next April, because I won't. The Department of Education will get it next April. I think this is part of why I was so deeply unhappy about the whole thing (aside from the whole "money snatched from my pocket while attempting to save up for badly-needed medical care for my husband" bit); it reminded me that I suck and am a loser.

*   Speaking of things that suck, why the buggery FUCK doesn't Medicare cover preventive dental care for transplant recipients, anyway? I get that a lot of dental work can be considered cosmetic, and that technically one can get by without teeth, but here's the thing: in an immunocompromised person a dental infection can kill. There is nothing optional about getting the very worst of what's wrong with Hotter's mouth fixed, and Medicare isn't even saving Uncle Sam any money by not covering this stuff, because I'm guessing not a lot of single transplant recipients go on to marry people who are willing to work their ass off and handle this shit. Which means that some of those who are even more fucked than Hotter is end up getting infections, which if they are too poor to have broken teeth extracted and cavities filled and already scrambling to cover their 20% of the medications they need to take every day to not DIE they probably aren't going to go in for right away. When they end up septic Medicare then covers their ambulance trip, their ER bed, their emergency oral surgery and week of IV antibiotics, their echocardiogram to see if they have vegetation on their heart valves, their maintenance meds and ICU bed, and whatever else they need while they're in-patient (and taking a transplant patient to the hospital is like taking a teenaged car to the mechanic--you may go in with a specific goal in mind but they WILL find more work to do while you're there). And all of that for the unfortunate few? Costs a HELL of a lot more than two cleanings and a set of x-rays every year for everybody, even if those DO reveal the need for a few fillings and maybe an extraction or two. /soapbox

*   So I had kind of a crappy day, but it wasn't entirely without merit. For one thing, today I wore a new scarf (this scarf was the last frivolous thing I bought before money went utterly to hell again) that thrills me to the very core for two reasons. First, it's a fabulous scarf (half silk, half pashmina, butter-soft and utterly gorgeous). And second, it was an AMAZING deal ($9.99, free shipping, 1% cash back).

*   Speaking of deals, this free app gave me a sick little thrill earlier today. It's designed to help you find the cheapest gas around, but that's not what I use it for. I already know that Big Box Membership Store will have the cheapest gas around and so unless I have some fuel points from Local Grocery Store to use elsewhere I just buy gas there. No, I use GasBuddy to GLOAT. Yesterday I paid $3.36/gallon for gas at Big Box Membership Store and today that same gas (from the same place) is $3.42/gallon!!! So I saved a little over a dollar by filling the MFA Minivan up yesterday on my way home instead of waiting until today. WHOO TITS!

*   Also my dog is crazy-cute:

Figure One: Of *course* I mean Isis. Bumpus? IS NO DOG OF MINE! He's on his second psych med now; the first one didn't work and while on it he ate a door. I love how Isis does the homie lean, or maybe she's just trying to get AWAY from Bumpus (actually they are the best of friends, which is one of the only two reasons Bumpus still draws breath under my roof, the other one being that so far the cost of the therapy Big Child would need if I got rid of the stupid dog still outweighs what we'll lose of our security deposit thanks to his crazypants antics).

*   And then a sweet friend did something incredibly kind that really raised my spirits. I don't know if she'd be okay with my saying what she did, exactly, or naming her, but I really needed something to cheer my sorry ass up, and this did the job. 

*   I am off to bed, because tomorrow is a seventeen-hour day. Ooof. God, I hate money.

words with perverts

   I've always said my kids and I don't have much of a sense of community, but last night? A truly touching and special moment occurred between me and my boys and the innernet! I was sitting at the table playing Words With Friends and keeping the littles company while they cut a whitepages phonebook into spaghetti-strips for the worm box, and Big Child came and hung over my shoulder trying to come up with a word for me. Middly and Little Child got up, too, and wanted to see the board, so we all had a look. 

   "Since the game is called Words With Friends, the person you are playing with is your friend, right," asked Big Child, The Literal. I took a breath to say that I often play random strangers because I am addicted to Words With Friends a big fat slut on the innernet, just ask Daddy everyone's friend but then noticed that yes, actually my opponent was someone I "met" online as a blog reader years and years ago, am now Facespace friends with, and who my kids have an awareness of and HEYYYY! "Yep, that's _______," I said. "You know your favorite jammies, Little Child, and your snow boots, Middly? Her son is the big kid who broke 'em in for ya and she is the one who sent me that heavy package full of stuff for you guys."

   "Coool!"

   I think my kids have had a kind of binary view of the innernet. It is made up of our friends who send us stickers and hand-me-downs, homemade hand-balm that soothes eczema and birthday cards, gift cards that have fed us celebratory dinners and good knock-knock jokes, and then there are The Perverts.

   The Perverts are why Big Child wasn't allowed to subscribe to Lego Universe, even if he used his birthday money from the XY's family (because the subscription version had a chat feature, which means The Perverts could get at you!). They're also to blame for people not being allowed to link their DSis and Xboxes and Wiis to the (encrypted, password-protected) wireless router. "What do The Perverts DO, Mommy? I wouldn't give anyone our address or anything! They can't like, reach through the innernet and get me!" They're perverts, I say. They are clever and nasty and good at manipulating kids, and I am not taking any chances with them. When you're eighteen and you get your own innernet you'll see what I mean. The MFA Children seem to think The Perverts are perhaps mythical figures Hotter and I have made up to avoid sharing the innernet or something, but they largely accept it.

   "Heeeey, wait. Your friend just played TITS. IS YOUR FRIEND A PERVERT?"

***************************************************************************

   In the spirit of community amongst friendly perverts, a giveaway of a fabulous product made by a reader:

   YES, A GIVEAWAY. TO ENTER, GO TO @RAINBOWSOUFFLE'S ETSY SHOP AND THEN COME BACK HERE AND LEAVE ME A COMMENT TELLING ME YOUR FAVORITE THING SHE HAS LISTED. WINNER GETS SOME OF THAT FABULOUS BALM, FOR FREE!

   This is the stuff I carry in my work bag and use every day. It really helps keep my cuticles from disintegrating entirely in the winter between food service and virus season and animals and children...that's a lot of hand-washing. If you don't win some you should totally buy some, and that is my unsolicited and honest review of the stuff. I am very happy one of you gets to try it!

upping my dirty hippie-cred

   SO! I felt like my dirty hippie-cred was somewhat diminished after a conversation that happened on my wall over at the Facespace (basically I admitted that while I knew good and well Splenda was already showing up in our waterways and having unknown effects on the feeding pattern of key bottom-of-the-foodchain small critters, I found powdered Stevia in coffee to be utterly repulsive and resorted to some sweet, sweet molecularly-muddled sugar product instead like a damn ecoterrorist and then a bunch of friends weighed in until finally a friend of mine from a third-world country pointed out that were were all a bunch of overly-precious assholes, although not in so many words), plus we were almost out of laundry detergent. So today I followed some instructions I found in several spots around the innernet, added my own little twist, and made us some at home.

 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

  You will need Ivory soap: 

washing soda:

borax:

and (optional) an essential oil of your choice to scent your detergent (I used lavender):

Step One: gather your ingredients. You will also need a large pan or mixing bowl, a grater, and a whisk, as well as something to put your detergent in (I re-used a laundry detergent box that already had a scoop of the right size--you're supposed to use two to four tablespoons of this stuff per load of wash).

Step Two: grate one bar of Ivory per "batch" of detergent that you are making. I found that five "batches" filled our detergent box to about the same level as its' original contents, which was important since I wanted to do a price comparison. Use the fine side of the grater; the soap is very easy to grate and ends up looking a lot like something you'd want to put on top of spaghetti.

Step Three: add one cup per "batch" apiece of the washing soda and borax, blend with the whisk until you reach a nice "scoopable" texture. Then add a few sprinkles of essential oil and blend some more.

   And there you have it: homemade laundry detergent. Here is my box with four of five "batches" in it.

   I did a test load of wash, and in my opinion the homemade detergent works at least as well as what I had been using before (in fact, I think it works BETTER for removing odors--included in the test load were some hand-me-down sweaters my co-worker/friend at PseudoCorp gave me, and she is a smoker so to me they kind of reeked going in but smelled nice and clean coming out). But does this actually save any money? Here are the prices I paid for the ingredients.

Ivory: $18.06 for 32 bars = $0.56 per bar
Washing Soda: $5.97 for 55 oz = $0.87 per cup
Borax: $7.88 for 76 oz = $0.83 per cup
Lavender Oil: $8.75 for 0.5 oz* = I figure I used about $0.10 worth of this per batch

   So one "batch" of homemade detergent costs $2.36, and it took five batches to fill my detergent box. Therefore, the per-box cost of the homemade stuff is $11.80. How does that measure up against the retail equivalent (green-friendly, scented)?

   VICTORY! I saved $2.25, plus there's the intangible value of being insufferable and saying I make my own laundry detergent any chance I get, which you really can't put a price on. Probably I could get the cost down a little further if I bought my ingredients from an actual store (with the exception of the Ivory I ordered mine from Drugstore.com in order to use eBates and get cash back at the rate of 12% as of when I made my purchases, plus "Drugstore dollars" [5%] and accounted for my savings in the prices I listed), but I prefer shopping online, and pretty much ONLY do so when I can score free shipping. This saves me time and schlepping. Plus to really save I'd most likely have to patronize a Soulless Corporate Megalith store, and I don't like to do that; I don't know for a fact that Amazon and Drugstore.com treat their workers well, but I DO know for a fact that Soulless Corporate Megalith treats their workers like SHIT, and that's to say nothing of what they do to small businesses when one comes to town. So I'll take saving the $2.25 and earning bragging rights and call it a day.

   And how are all of YOU?

 

*  If you're looking at what I paid for lavender oil vs. the price listed on the Amazon Affiliates widget and wondering if I be cray, the answer is yes and no. The lavender oil I used was what I had on-hand, which was organic and therefore kind of pricey, but I prefer to use organic essential oils since I mostly use them for bath and body products and other things, like detergent, that will come into contact with human skin. We have sensitive skin here. So I didn't overpay, but I did consciously choose a more expensive product.

and now for something that doesn't suck!

   In the interest of being greener (and hopefully saving a little money), I decided to put up some insulating window film this winter. Casa MFA is old and kind of drafty, and Hotter's and my bedroom in particular gets COLD, especially if we sleep with the door shut, which we do most nights so that a) Isis doesn't get down from the bed and go wandering and b) we can sleep naked if we so choose without scarring the kids for life. So I researched it and the general consensus per the innernet was that this product was by far superior in both performance and ease of installation:

Figure One: Yep, it's an affiliate link.

   So I ordered myself some kits (although I actually didn't order mine from Amazon; I am too cheap to join Amazon Prime and didn't need enough kits to qualify for free Super Saver shipping so instead I got mine from Drugstore.com) (they have 'em on sale currently and right now you can get 12% cashback through eBates as well--WIN!) and a couple of days ago I installed them with help from Hotter and Big Child.

   The installation was a breeze, which is really saying something when you consider that I was mixing mySELF, heights, double-sided tape, and the assistance of my husband and oldest child. You don't have to get the film perfectly taut before adhering it to the tape; it shrinks up nicely when you heat it with the hairdryer. WHOO TITS!

   As far as the performance of the product goes, Hotter and I got a night of very poor sleep the first night after we installed the things, because WE WERE HOT (I did the windows in our bedroom first but didn't want to lower the thermostat until we did the boys' rooms). Once we adjusted the thermostat (we ended up lowering it by three whole degrees after everyone's windows were done) all was roses, and I can't wait to see how this affects our power bill! 

   So yeah, 3M gets two thumbs way up in my unsponsored, uncompensated review that they totally didn't endorse in any way, shape or form, and all of y'all should give this a try (preferably either through that affiliate link up there or by signing up for eBates through my referral link and buying them from Drugstore, heh).

2nd.MD: The doctor is in! (a sponsored review)

Thank you to 2nd.MD for providing me with a $200 stipend to test-drive this revolutionary online medical service.

   When I saw that Clever Girls Collective had a sponsored post opportunity that involved trying out a  revolutionary new way to get in touch with a top specialist from home, I was really excited, for obvious reasons. I mean hello, every single person in my household has complex medical issues necessitating entire TEAMS of specialists, who aren't always all that available for questions that aren't life-or-death. When I found out I was selected for this opportunity I thought long and hard about which specialty to consult with. I don't think there's any specialty we HAVEN'T had dealings with, after all, so I was a little bewildered in the face of SO. MANY. OPTIONS. And the combination of medicine and social media was RIGHT UP MY ALLEY, OH MAH GAH.

   I finally decided to narrow it down by ruling out specialties we were already happy with (like I hate the eye doctor LIKE POISON, but that said mine is one of the best in the nation so I don't really need a second opinion there), ones with a heavy hands-on clinical aspect (for example, to effectively address specifics of the connective tissue disease my children and I all have, a geneticist would want to move our joints around, feel our skin, have us do various physical things not easily captured on webcam...), and specialties where prescriptions are heavily involved (for example, I need to get back on ADD meds but while a psychiatrist-inside-the-computer might be able to make recommendations for specific drugs, they obviously can't prescribe that way and I don't know how well it would go over if I went to see MY psychiatrist and told him I wanted to try X controlled substance because Dr. Y from-the-innernet told me I should...).

   I finally decided I wanted to go with a sports medicine doc; many of the sports medicine specialists on 2nd.MD have SUPER-impressive credentials and I'm not realistically going to shell out a co-payment and day off to see one on my own. Plus the reason I wanted to see one (namely to get some tips on exercises, specific taping techniques/compression garments, etc. that might help me avoid the recurrent injuries I am so prone to when I run) was something I felt could be effectively addressed in a videoconference. Yay!

   My enthusiasm started to fizzle around the time the second specialist declined to take me on. I get why they have this option; obviously not everyone is very medically savvy and some people might select specialties that are wildly inappropriate or doctors within a specialty who don't often handle their particular issue, but...any able-bodied person can run and women in particular are prone to stress fractures. I didn't feel like mine was such a crazy concern. Finally I found a doctor who was willing to talk to me: WHOO!

   Unfortunately he didn't show up for our "appointment." Booo...here is where I have to say that 2nd.MD's customer service is AMAZING. If a doctor doesn't show up for your appointment (which given that doctors have, um, emergencies and stuff, isn't such a far-fetched idea) you automatically get a refund from 2nd.MD, but what the fine print doesn't say is that when that happens they go ABOVE AND BEYOND to make sure you don't give up on the service itself. The rep's exact words when I contacted him, frantic, at COB on a Friday when my post was due no later than TODAY, were "you go and have a good weekend and let me work some magic." 

   I won't lie. Initially I was not impressed with the magic. Because it took the form of a rush-appointment with...drumroll...a rheumatologist. Yeah, 2nd.MD's sports docs unanimously wanted nothing to do with me because of the rare and freaky connective tissue thing, and I was...pretty offended, honestly. Because what the heck was a rheumatologist going to know about this (I mean yeah, technically I have an autoimmune disease that falls under their specialty AS WELL, but it has no impact on my running and all symptoms that have majorly impacted my life have been effectively addressed through drugs and surgery)?

   At this point, I think if I'd been a regular paying customer I might've given up on 2nd.MD. Since I wasn't actually paying for the service out of my own pocket, though (and uh, wanted the income from this sponsored post opportunity), I decided I had nothing to lose by going into my appointment with Dr. Kirkwood Johnston with an open mind.

   Y'all, I am so glad I did that.

   Dr. Johnston isn't just a rheumatologist, he's also an avid runner and something of a rare disease afficionado. Instead of one of the two usual reactions medical professionals tend to have when I tell them about my specific connective tissue disease (either "umm...how do you spell that? I've never heard of it!" or "HOLY CRAP YOU POOR THING, YOU SHOULD TALK TO A GENETICIST OR PRETTY MUCH ANYONE WHO ISN'T ME!"), Dr. Johnston said "tell me about your [insert condition name here; it's rare enough to be potentially identifying so I'm not putting it up on my personal blog], what subtype is it and how severely affected are you?" He went on to explain, laughing, after I told him how the sports docs had all shied away from seeing me, that a lot of the time people's reaction to rare stuff that can impact mobility is one of "CALL A RHEUMATOLOGIST!" and this was actually right up his alley.

   I'd love to show you a screenshot of my consultation with Dr. Johnston, but apparently Awesome Screenshot and the 2nd.MD chat interface don't play well together because when I took one I ended up with this:

Figure One: Not-so-awesome screen shot. 

   So you'll kind of have to use your imaginations a little. Here is what Dr. Johnston looks like. And here is what I looked like during our consultation, modeling my anti-asthma attack running mask for running in cold weather (taken with my iPhone during the actual consultation, which you can sort of see in the reflection off my glasses) (last time I EVER don't shell out for the anti-glare coating on lenses, incidentally):

Figure Two: You didn't really think I'd out myself for this post, did you? Also? Funny story: I thought Dr. Johnston would be in on the whole "you are talking to a blogger who is being paid to review your services" angle, because COME ON, but apparently he was NOT in on the joke and when I said, apropos nothing, that I blogged anonymously and whipped out the mask in the middle of a chat about joint and muscle health I think the poor guy thought he was about to become an unwitting participant in some kind of fetish porn. But he was a good sport about it!

   So, my actual, honest-to-goodness opinion is that this is an amazing service. I got some truly excellent advice on how to minimize the risk of further injury (although Dr. Johnston was careful to stress that this would only REDUCE the risk, because "as you know you're going to hurt yourself a lot no matter WHAT you do," which shows he knows the condition I have pretty well, actually), from an unexpected source, and aside from the technology failing me when it came to the screen shot (AHEM, AWESOME SCREENSHOT) I have no complaints at all despite the false start. I was actually really impressed, not least in that after I caused a super-awkward moment by whipping out that mask it was SUPER-easy to exit the appointment with the remaining shreds of my dignity. Because it's easy to trip over your own feet on the way out a physical door (um, not that *I* ever did that while beating a hasty retreat from a horrified medical professional, hoooo no), but even I can't manage to hurt myself clicking the x at the top right of a screen.

Thank you again to 2nd.MD for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about 2nd.MD. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own. #Clever2ndMD #spon

love/hate some more, because it's that or bullets

Love: I lost two pounds mysteriously overnight (actually I think the cold is on its way out, and we all know how my body handles even the most minor of viral infections).

Hate: The seemingly random nature of weight loss. Staying under calorie goals and exercising daily? HERE HAVE AN EXTRA POUND. Going over calorie goals slightly and exercising daily then saying "ah fuck it" and snarfing half a box of Triscuits with cream cheese on? WAKE UP TWO POUNDS LIGHTER. Maybe I should make the Triscuit and cream cheese binge a daily thing, then? Probably not.

Love: I have Weekend Warrior Job today, and while it'll make gas money...interesting...until my next paycheck, it's a fun place to work and pretty good money (plus free food).

Hate: Being away from my husband on a child-free weekend. Also: Weekend Warrior Management, for jerking me around LAST weekend and texting me last night to change my hours for today slightly, and how much today's free food will prolly eff up my diet (yes, I know, moderation etc. but there is NOTHING healthy to eat at Weekend Warrior Job so I've just decided that Weekend Warrior Days are days off of the diet, for the sake of my mental health).

Love: Good karma. Yesterday a PseudoCorp employee found an ID badge outside the building that wasn't one of ours, and technically all I'm supposed to do is hand it over to Security to chuck in the Lost and Found but I wasn't terribly busy at the time, so I Google-stalked the badge's owner and she was absolutely delighted that it had been found because at her job you have to pay for replacement badges if you lose yours. When I got home I found that Amazon.com had sent me a mystery gift card for a bungled order I don't remember placing. WHOO TITS!

Hate: Bad deductive reasoning. Last week the head cheese from Temp Agency #1 came to meet with PseudoCorp HR, and everyone who works in my area except me had a mysterious meeting that no one would talk about, and I'd just about convinced myself they were going to make me an offer. I could TASTE the benefits and the on-site gym membership, and then...nothing happened. So probably it was nothing to do with me and I was just reading too much into things, although on the plus side I now know How I Really Feel about PseudoCorp and that if they DO make me an offer I will gladly accept.

Love: Hotter's phone appointment with Social Security went well and it now looks like he "probably" WILL qualify for "extra help," meaning no "gap."

Hate: We won't know anything for certain for "a week," and apparently if Hotter DOES qualify it's only by the very narrowest of margins, meaning that if money sucks even a LITTLE bit less next year we'll have to deal with this all over again, and we still won't have that kind of money just lying around.

Love: My new cooties. The old ones never really took off and started generating more and more icky sediment, and not multiplying AT ALL, and carbonating the water kefir less and less so I ordered some new ones from someone on Amazon.com and these ones MULTIPLY LIKE CRAZY and carbonate the water kefir enough that the glass stopper-bottles sound like champagne bottles when I open them, and WOW!

Hate: Cultures For Health. If it'd just been me with the bad result I would've been willing to call it user error, but I also purchased some of their cooties as a gift for a friend and hers never did anything at ALL, and having seen the night-and-day difference between their stock and cooties from elsewhere (which incidentally were half the price) I have decided that Cultures For Health is bullshit. AND overpriced. DO NOT BUY COOTIES FROM CULTURES FOR HEALTH.

Love: Thanks to the way my new cooties multiply, I have enough to send some to said friend, and actually if any of YOU are dying for some cooties of your very own, let me know and we'll work something out as long as you can cover shipping and packaging costs.

Hate: I am just today feeling human enough to possibly get to the effing Post Office with those salt scrubs in addition to working, which pretty much makes me a TOTAL asshole, and if anybody would like a refund just let me know. I'll wait until Monday to ship 'em out to give people time to see this. Oof.

Love: I think I am FINALLY getting over that cold (still sneezing, but the weight drop means it's on its' way out).

Hate: That my body is such a jerk about sickness in general. And exercise (owww my legs). And pretty much anything besides lying in bed subsisting on tofu, spinach, and flaxseed meal, or somesuch (I'm guessing; haven't actually tried that or anything).

Love: The sun is out today! It's been a while!

Hate: I broke my ancient prescription sunglasses and have to drive for an hour during daylight today. 'Nuff said.

   What are you loving and hating this weekend?

the one where I feel the love

   I've said this before, and I'm saying it again; y'all are some seriously amazing people. Just this week, readers of this humble website have:

*   Dropped enough spare change in the tip jar that I was able to fill the gas tank of the MFA Minivan and get some necessary groceries. I didn't say anything, but part of my gloom last week was that getting to work and making sure we're not out of milk between now and the first of the month was going to be dicey. But thanks to a few of y'all it's all good.

*   Sent me AH-MA-ZING "everything cream." I saw my pal RainbowSouffle mention this stuff on the Twitter in the context of "if I offered this for sale in my Etsy shop would anyone maybe wanna buy it?" and pre-disaster e-mailed her and said "YES, I would totally buy that" and she was all "NO, I will NOT take your money" and just sent me some. It's full of awesome stuff like coconut oil and beeswax and vitamin E oil and she can scent it with sweet orange or peppermint essential oil (I chose sweet orange) and OMG THE AMAZINGNESS. It's solid but spreads smoothly, all natural, antimicrobial (coconut oil is magic, y'all), and you can use it on your lips, face, hands, cuticles, or pretty much anywhere. Except for probably your eyes. I mean, I haven't tried it, but...yeah. Currently it's not up in the shop but if you ask nicely I'm sure RainbowSouffle'll list it; she certainly should. AHEM, RAINBOWSOUFFLE.

*   Offered to custom-make something AWESOME for me that is a seeeecret for now because Hotter doesn't know what it is (HAHAHA, HOTTER).

*   Filled the comments section of this post with all kinds of pink-puffy-heart love.

   Between you wonderful people, my family, and what's looking to be a longer-term job at PseudoCorp (which continues to grow on me; it was a tough adjustment initially but I think it's actually good for me to have to present a thousand people per day with a dazzling smile and a chipper greeting in a fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of way, and also I really like a lot of my co-workers there) I can't hardly stay in a foul mood. My life may suck at times, but by and large it's full of the awesome.

   Thanks to all of y'all who helped remind me of that :)

the one with the nerdgasm over fitness

   So I've gotten really into the whole dieting/fitness thing, and now in addition to Runkeeper I have the Livestrong Calorie Tracker, and OMG. I may have to leave Hotter for the Livestrong Calorie Tracker (but only if it will let me keep Runkeeper as my dirty little bitch on the side). It has EVERYTHING. For instance: I use one half of a cup of Chobani Black Cherry yogurt in my smoothie, along with a bunch of other ingredients? No problem! I can pull that up BY BRAND and indicate that I had a half a serving, plus a cup and a half of raw spinach, two tbsp. of Bob's Red Mill flaxseed meal, and half a cup of frozen mixed berries with eight ounces of water kefir (yes, it has water kefir! Only the kind made with coconut water, but I figure the calories are comparable). BOOM.

   At this point I should probably point out that I am not being compensated by the Livestrong folks and this is not an official review; I paid the $2.99 like everybody else and my desire to hump their product is spontaneous and genuine.

   Aaaaanyway, I put my height, weight, and age into the app, tell it what my weight goal is (to lose 2 lbs. per week, which is the max the program allows you to choose), and specify my job activity level (sedentary), and it tells me how many calories I get over the course of a day if I want to meet that goal. BUT! I can then engage in various activities (also very, very specific, like it has different "walk" options for "walking with a dog," "walking with a leaf blower," etc.) and it takes the calories burned off my calories consumed for a "net calorie" count. So in theory if I was totally dying for a cheeseburger and fries I could run a 10k or something and then have them without endangering my goal or starving for the rest of the day. And in practice, I can have my oatmeal and grapefruit in the morning for breakfast, my salad and water kefir for lunch, take a forty-minute walk on my lunchbreak after I eat my salad (using Runkeeper to track my distance covered), come home, eat a TON of homemade turkey noodle soup along with a glass of Blueberry Pomegranate juice for dinner, futz around on the innernets and helping kids with homework, then make a spinach smoothie and go for a thirty-minute jog (again with the Runkeeper), and finish the day not hungry in the least but with 164 calories "left over" even AFTER randomly squirting a tablespoon or so of whipped cream into my mouth (the effing can ATTACKED ME and I seriously think it may have...okay, broken is a strong word but I do honestly believe it CHIPPED...my shinbone as I was virtuously rooting out the Cranberry Pomegranate juice bottle in order to accurately enter its' information into Livestrong).

   That's pretty badass.

   And yeah, I'm still pretty wretchedly depressed, although as you may have noticed, I've embraced the philosophy of "if eating, sleeping, and exercise are GOOD for one's mood then I'll just do MORE of ALL THREE" and I think it is helping. At the very least it's filling my non-work time up in ways that are productive or at least not HARMFUL and distracting me, what with the gadgets to log everything. There WAS some good job news recently on not one but TWO fronts: at PseudoCorp the Big Boss's assistant let me know that if I continue to perform as well as I have been I can plan on staying on indefinitely as a temp (while not the holy grail of BENEFITS this is still excellent news) and Weekend Warrior Job unexpectedly has work for me this coming weekend. So that's good.

   How are all of YOU?

 

P.S. Thanks for the comments on my last post, by the way. I think Hotter is overruled and I'll be checking in grumpy or not. If he doesn't like the grumpy on the blog* then he has the same option to click the little x in the upper right corner as everyone else does. 

* As for the grumpy in person, well, he's the fool who married me. Don't feel too sorry for him. I give excellent head.