A Week in the Life: Updated

So I'm thinking maybe I won't be able to do 3 pages a day... But one page is just fine, right? The idea is to record your everyday.

My everyday, quite honestly, isn't all that interesting. As I browse through posts by some of the other participants, well, I just don't think to take a picture of the really cool brick road near my child's school (no child, no school, no brick road). I don't take self portraits of me running on the treadmill (while I DO have a treadmill, I DON'T run on it!). There are no pictures of me taking care of my stunningly beautiful baby girl (although I did take a picture of my beautiful daughter when she popped by the house to see her new tire rim the other day... and I took a picture of her rim...).

What did I take pictures of? Okay, here you go, an update:

• the new shoes I ordered from Zappos - FitFlops for those of you who care!
• as mentioned before, the new rim we bought for M
• my work PC screen when an IM popped up on it from an ex-colleague
• the backyard at the lake with more dirt dropped and more plants transplanted
• the vitamins I bought for my sister's dog
• the shop I bought a cup of coffee at
• the parking garage I parked in this morning (REALLY bad photo - no idea if I'll be able to use it)
• the waiting room at the Imaging Center where I went for my annual mammogram (be sure to get checked!)
• the front door of the building where I work
• some wall art around the corner from my job that illustrates Hoboken and its history, painting on the wall around the park at 4th and Hudson
• the salad I had for lunch yesterday
• my groceries on the conveyor belt in the Shop Rite
• the little bagel shop we had breakfast at on Sunday
• the pills I take every evening: BC, Calcium+D3, and D3
• a page in the art journal I created for an online class I'm taking
• the weather monitor showing the temperature in the house and outside at the lake on Sunday
• dinner cooking in the pan on Saturday night - in honor of my MIL, who died 9 years ago next month - we had one of her classic meals on her b'day Saturday
• J driving the truck
• the Burger King where we ate on Saturday afternoon
• a few really cool photos at the place where we bought some turfstones on Saturday - a huge factory, different exterior stones, big bales of fencing wire
• the container plants we planted for our new faux front porch - this warrants a photo and a post all its own at some point in the future... remind me if I forget...
• our street sign and a couple of shots coming down the road to our lakehouse
• the church we attend at the lake
• some clothes I tried on in the store on Saturday
• me reflected in the mirror in the dressing room - fully clothed! No worries!
• the appetizer I forgot to take a picture of until it was almost all gone

Okay, so these photos were perhaps a bit more of my everyday than last weeks photos from work... One desk, 10 hours sitting in front of the same computer screen - doesn't lend itself well to various photos of my everyday!!!
I think I'm going to take pictures a few more days; tonight is our usual Monday night at my SIL's. I didn't take any photos there last week and it's definitely something I would want a record of it (the only night I eat dessert every week!) and time spent with family. This weekend I'll take a ride up to the lake and get some supplies; I think we might be home working at J's niece's house to get her nursery ready for the baby-to-be!
J will finally find out if it's a boy or a girl! Neither of us wanted to know but my SIL slipped and told me. I've been keeping it quiet until J finds out but will tell you all once he hears! (I don't think I told you already!) I really feel very strongly about not knowing; I have a 100% record of guessing when I guess, but it's usually in the 9th month, just before the baby joins us. I wanted to guess this one, too, and I was leaning toward either a boy or a girl (;-D), but when my SIL spilled the beans, well, I was right! I will admit how much fun it's been going shopping for either a boy or a girl, looking at all those cute boy and girl clothes... I admit to enjoying that, but still, DON'T tell me if you're pregnant whether it's a boy or a girl! I like to guess!
Well, gotta run - it's time to go home!

A Week in the Life...

My life is boring. And never have I been more convinced of that than this past week!

I am supposed to be taking numerous pictures each day of "my life" - my boring, ordinary life that's just like every one else's boring, ordinary life who's participating in that same project. What project, you ask? Visit Ali's blog; she started this whole deal.

So there are thousands of women, scrappers all over the globe, participating in this project. There's Cathy Zielski - here's a link to HER blog. The other day? She took 192 pictures.

1.9.2. One.hundred.ninety-two. CXCII. (Is that right?)

192 pictures? I'm struggling to break 10 in a day!!! I know I'm supposed to take photos of "my every day." And I tried. So, in words (photos to come at a later day!), here's a typical week:

• picture of my breakfast
• picture of me dressed and coifed for work
• picture of my desk
• picture of PC screen
• picture of a representative project on my desk
• picture out the window of my office of NYC hidden by fog
• picture of my lunch
• picture of my dinner
• picture of J
• picture of us watching TV
• picture of my breakfast (which, btw, IS.EXACTLY.THE.SAME.AS.YESTERDAY'S
• picture of me dressed and coifed for work
• picture of my desk
• picture of PC screen - oh, wow! Different shot!
• picture of representative project on my desk - I do the same thing every day, people, so this looks the same as yesterday's, too!
• picture out the window of my office of NYC NOT hidden by fog
• picture of my lunch - different salad, but salad, nonetheless
• picture of my dinner (Oh, this picture is of an empty plate 'cause I forgot to take a photo of the dinner itself!)
• picture of J doing something a little different, maybe changing a tire rather than cleaning the basement
• picture of us watching TV (hey, it IS a different show!)
• and on, and on, and on
• and to shake it all up, OH! I did laundry one day!!! Wanna see photos of my clean socks?!?

This is going to be ONE.BORING.PROJECT.

To prove it, I'll post those pictures later on... I'm going to take photos for two weeks, in the off chance something interesting happens to me, or around me, next week...

It's time...

... to get serious about my health.

I went to the doctor Tuesday for a cystoscopy. Thank goodness there's nothing seriously wrong - just what they call "benign essential hematuria." (If you're really interested you can look it up - it's nothing serious. In fact, I don't have to go back for a follow-up for, and I quote, "10 or 15 years.")

But now I have no excuse. I have no excuse to not take care of myself. I have no reason to "take it easy until they find out what's wrong..."

So today I had fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch, and a slice of pepperoni pizza for dinner. I had 20 ounces of vitamin water, a medium iced coffee, and a few sips of J's coke at dinner. I'm going to go and grab a bottle of water in a couple of minutes because I still need some more liquid for the day.

I'm going to start walking more, moving more, eating less, eating better. I'm going to inflate my exercise ball and start using it for some exercises I read about that are supposed to help reduce the pain in my hips that I've decided comes from the early stages of osteoarthritis. I have early arthritis in my pinky fingers. My hips hurt when I sit for a length of time and then get up to walk. They hurt more when I go upstairs, trying to move my own weight against gravity, then when I go downstairs, with the help of gravity.

I'm simply too young to be slowed up by arthritic symptoms that I only have because I'm too lazy to do some slight to moderate exercise. And I know myself: once slight becomes moderate, I actually begin to enjoy it anyway. It just takes a while for me to "get into it." Deep down inside, readers, I'm just plain lazy.

So with your support (send those good wishes my way, please!) I'm going to try. I'll keep you all posted!m

A Week in the Life

I'm doing it.
Again.
A Week in the Life.
Go visit Ali's blog here to see what it's all about.


Well, at least I'm going to give it my best shot!!!

In Baltimore...

I'm sounding like a broken record, but I'm really missing my hubby. It's his birthday, the first one we've ever spent apart, and I'm hating being three states away when he's home celebrating (NOT!). I've called him several times, and I say "Happy Birthday, Hon!" every time he answers the phone and "I miss you" every time we hang up.

I left him a "Wish I was home with you" card on his pillow. Corny? Maybe. But he always leaves me a card to tell me how much he missed me when I'm away (there'll probably be one there when I get home tomorrow) and I DO! Wish I was there, with him.

The hotel is nice; I'm staying at the Sheraton Baltimore Center City. I have a single room with a queen-sized bed, a beautiful upgraded bathroom with a full shower (no tub!), a nice pedestal sink with a chrome frame, and some morning coffee in the room! Even though it's Starbucks (and I'm not a huge fan - it's a bit too bitter for me), I'll enjoy a cuppa tomorrow morning AT 5:30AM. We're leaving by 7am for Hoboken - boss is driving and he has an 11am meeting.

Oops - Dancing with the Stars is coming on -- well, it just started, and I took a bit of a break from this post to watch the intros... And then, one of our new favorite shows, Castle, is on! It's not award-winning television, but there's just something about the interaction between the two main characters that reminds me of Moonlighting: some sexual tension, some fun facial expressions, I don't really know what it is that I love about the show (the writing is pretty good -some of the lines are great!) - but I DO love it and I have to be hunkered down with my iced coffee to watch it in a couple of hours...

See ya soon!

Some miscellaneous photos...

As promised - TOTALLY miscellaneous photos, with no rhyme or reason other than they were taken recently...

The first day this year we were able to sit outside and enjoy the sun without being cold. I was playing around with the camera trying to get a new portrait photo and got this one - I like the variation in color in my hair. Just wish the roots wouldn't come so often... Here in NJ we have suffered from lots of flooding. This is a block or two away from my girlfriend's house in Lincoln Park. That is one of the most hardest hit areas any time there is flooding in the Passaic River. The storms have been gone for two weeks now and this water is still standing in the woods near her home. The water table is so high that there's nowhere for the water to go. This year will be a bad year for mosquitos... Allergies are already bad - Branchbrook Park's cherry blossoms (all 4200 trees!) are now in full bloom. All those brides hoping for photos under the flowering trees will be S.O.L. in a week or two since the flowers are 2 or 3 weeks early...

I showed you a photo of my new window seats already but here's one with the middle piece in place. The two end units have baskets that load in from the front; the middle one lifts up for closed storage. Going to be filling those puppies today!!!

On the way home from looking at the damage from the flooding last Sunday, we heard a terrible noise when we pulled onto Route 23 South. Here's a photo of our tire. I didn't take a picture of the cars whizzing past us at 60mph, on either side! We were pulled over in the worst possible place - right in the triangle between the entrance ramps for Route 80 East and Route 46 East, coming south on Route 23. Anyone who knows this area knows just where we were! Thankfully a nice construction guy with emergency flashers pulled up behing us and helped by putting on his lights. He even helped J with the tire, even though he was almost already done...

This year's friends: Fred and Ethel! They're sitting on the dock in this photo but we just found out this morning they laid, she laid an egg in our neighbor's flower bed. And he's doing some major landscaping and says he "hopes they don't disturb her too much when they move the wall." Guaranteed they will; I just hope she doesn't abandon the egg...

That's it for now - gotta go do my self-appraisal for work - yes, even though I'm on vacation I have work to do!!!

I know I owe you...

... photos and stories and more trivia than you'll ever need... After all, why would you bother to come here if you weren't expecting to read something new...

So, what sort of unimportant, trivial crap can I share with you here on my blog? Oh, there's plenty of that stuff! But important, fun stories that will keep you coming back?

Not so much.

Here's something that will matter not at all to you, but it's a big deal to me:

I am leaving on Monday morning to go to Baltimore for a conference. It's a short trip, just one night away from home. Not that big a deal, you say? You're right. But Monday is also my hubby's birthday and I REALLY.DON'T.WANT.TO.BE.AWAY.ON.HIS.BIRTHDAY.

When I told him I had to go, his response was, "That's okay, it's not like I'm a kid or anything."

But he said it in such a manner that I know it DOES matter. We love spending time together. We really enjoy each other's company. I'm sure there are days that he's not that thrilled with hearing another one of my stories for the umpteenth time (my mind is going - sometimes I tell the same story over and over... Are you sure I didn't mention I was going to be away...). I'm sure there are days when I'm in a cranky mood and taking it out on him that he'd actually prefer I was in Baltimore...

But it's his birthday. That really sucks. Darling stepdaughter said she's coming over with him to go to his sister's for cake and he tells her, "That's okay, you don't have to." He doesn't want her to have to drive back to her new apartment late at night - she recently moved about 10 miles away; she's not 2 miles down the road anymore. I know she's planning on just showing up anyway, but he's playing the loner already... Tonight his sister told him to come for dinner on Monday - "Nah." "We'll see."

He's not big on being the center of attention. And Lord knows he doesn't want to put anybody out. So much so he'd rather spend his birthday alone if I'm not here.

NOT AN OPTION, hon, are you listening?!?!?

I'm going to call him while he's at his sister's (I'm determined he's going to go!) so we can sing Happy Birthday together... and of course I'll call him later at night, before we turn go to bed...

I'm only going to be away for one day, but already IT SUCKS!

And on another topic... Does anyone have one of those "skins" for their laptop? Do I need one? I've looked at one or two websites - not too thrilled with the designs. Can anyone recommend a site where I can buy one that looks, well, more like "me" than some of the ones I've seen so far?

It hit 92 degrees here in NJ yesterday. YUK, that's all I have to say. That's just WAY too hot for early April. I'm hoping for a spring, even a short one, but to go from winter to summer? Uh-uh, not acceptable!

Well, it's late - gotta go sleepys now since we're getting up early to leave for the lake tomorrow morning. Toodles!

Happy Easter!

God bless you, one and all!
I'm off for a couple of days, with hubby, up at the lake.
Will catch up on blogging and posting and reading tomorrow and Tuesday!
Hope you had a lovely day!