awkward with pointy things

No nuclear warfare ensued at my house yesterday, much to my relief and surprise. Though Phoebe (the baby kitteh) is clearly not so smart, as evidenced by the below photo:

Gave blood today, which for some reason I have an absolute compulsion to do, though I'm not sure why. I feel like "I hate needles" is just really not an excuse (though it's true), what with all the "your blood could save a baby's life" propaganda plastered all over the side of the bloodmobile. And so, my needle-phobic self walked up in the bloodmobile (I love calling it that, ps) and donated. Now, I always go through a big elaborate process of giving myself a firm mental pep talk before I even walk in the door. It goes something like this:

Meredith, get your stupid wussy self in there, you already know it's going to hurt, yes, it will be THE WORST PAIN IMAGINABLE. Also the gaping hole they are going to create in your arm MIGHT NEVER CLOSE and as a result, all of the goo in there might spill out and you will die a slow, painful death. But you know what's worse? BEING A WUSS. So you are going to get in there, keep your mouth shut as much as possible, try not to visibly shake, and GET THIS JUNK DONE.
So that's what I do, except usually it involves me telling a lot of random stories in an awkwardly loud voice to the poor unsuspecting blood-taking people because I have to talk in order to distract myself and not become a quivering heap on the floor, screaming "OH GOD, NOT THE NEEDLE!"

What's interesting is that I am not afraid of anyone else's blood, am not grossed out by watching someone else get stuck/cut open/mangled by a shark/etc. In fact, I might like to even to do some cutting/sticking/mangling if it needs to be done, because really it kind of fascinates me. But if we are talking about needles with the pointy end toward me, or the possibility of MY insides becoming my outsides, well then, we have a major problem.

So this is the part where I get a giant badge of honor to go with my sticker, blue bandage, and nasty lukewarm juicebox, plus enough of a boost in my karma to go around keying people's cars for a month without repercussions because of my ENORMOUS PERSONAL SACRIFICE. Mwahahaha.

I'm a sucker

I have somehow become a foster kitten mama.

I've been calling her Phoebe, after much waffling and heartache, because nothing would stick. I tried Eloise, I tried Roxy, I tried Pickles and it was all just wrong. She wandered up to my friend E's house, but he has two big stupid Dobermans (is it weird that I am ok with cats but something about dogs, especially big dogs, just really grosses me out? They smell.) Anyway, they ran her up a tree and generally went all Al Qaeda on her, poor baby. So, his fiancee, being a good person, took her home. She has much cuter, more palatable dogs, and they liked the Phoebster, but her dad was a big jerkface about it and said she had to get rid of Phoebs or he would. So that's the story of how I became a kitten mama.

I am hoping that my bff's in-laws are going to take her this weekend, because while I love being a kitten mama, Tallulah (my other kitteh) is so not impressed. I have been incorporating Phoebs into the house in stages...at first she stayed in the garage, because I couldn't bring myself to leave her outside. I hate having outside cats, for one thing...I had so many get hit by cars as a country kid and it made me so sad. Also, they all get that wild, outside attitude that will cause them to pee in your bed if you ever do decide to bring them in, because it's snowing/hailing/you feel like having a cat in the house. And they get that outside-cat fur that makes them not pleasing to rub. You know, IMPORTANT STUFF LIKE THAT.

So, like I said, first it was the garage. Then my dad cleaned out the ugly furniture from my 2-car garage that came with the house, that he insisted on buying when we got the house, which I told him no one (including me) would ever want because it is heinous. That, in turn, turned my garage back into a 2-car space, and so he brought over my '73 Mustang convertible to live at my house, instead of taking up space at my parents' house. And of course, kittens + leather interior in a convertible/your new paint job on your old car = BAD TIMES. So, I started keeping her shut in my bathroom at night, letting her out during the day. Well today, the weather is supposed to be just awful (i.e., cold and rainy, the kind that will make me feel terrible for her all day). Soooo now I have progressed to letting her stay in the house all day, with Tallulah, with free reign over everything.

If it wasn't a 45 minute drive from the law school back to my house, I'd go check on them, as I am worried there is scratching of the furniture/fur flying/my crockpot of chili all over the floor/full-scale nuclear warfare. I hope this is not the case - we shall see when I get home.

Fill-in-the-Blank Tuesday

(Not Friday, because it's Tuesday, and also, alliteration is overrated.) Taken from restaurantrefugee.com

1. If I was on a first date with someone and he ordered a Heineken/wine/anything from the menu containing more than six syllables, I would probably end the date early. [I don't go for fancy - the six syllable rule doesn't apply if any of the words are super, deluxe, bacon, or chicken-fried.]
2. When I’m sick I really want someone to rub my back, bring me a warm washcloth for my forehead, and bring me lots of soda (which I never stop drinking, sick or not.)
3. I know that some people really love movies; but I don’t understand how they spend so much money on it. [I think I own about three DVD's, most of which have been given to me/I've stolen from other people. As a general rule, I'm not a movie re-watcher, unless it's on TV and I need background noise or it is just a fantastic movie AND I haven't seen it in forever.]
4. I know that some people think I’m crazy for spending so much money on sheets; but I really love it. [You can't beat a good set of 400 thread count sheets.]
5. I’m so glad that I’ve out grown most of my jealousy since high school. [I was a bitter, angsty, jealsface. Probably all the hormones.]
6. I am living proof that the stereotype about smart people isn’t always accurate. [I'm still with my high school sweetheart, who didn't go to college with me, and who still hasn't finished his degree in general. He's not rich, but he's smart in his own country-boy way, and he's fun, and we've always been in love. I never subscribed to the notion that you have to branch out and be with an "appropriate" person to be happy.]
7. I know that it is a made-up word; but noms/fantastical/anything with -pants as a suffix are a permanent part of my vocabulary.
8. I can’t wait for HALLOWEEN! It's the most fabulous holiday of the year (yes, better than Christmas, and no, I'm not a Satan-worshipper.)
9. The most common misconception about me is that I'm a big mean snotface. Seriously, I think sometimes people think that about me, because I keep to myself, I get in a fog when I walk around and don't stop to talk to people as much as I should, and I don't go out of my way to reach out to people. Also I'm terrible about returning phone calls. Need to work on all of those things.
10. I wish I wouldn’t eat so gosh-darn much all the time, so I wouldn't have to work out like my life depending on it to avoid gaining 2834858 pounds, but sometimes I just can’t stop myself.
11. If I never heard the word "moist" again, it would still be too soon. [That word just gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's gross.]
12. I have a hidden talent for arm-wrestling that no one would ever expect of me.
13. I am not a fan of extraordinary rendition; but if it were to take place for crimes against womanhood/music/everyone from North Carolina, then Kellie Pickler should be the first person on the plane to Guantanamo. [That whole playing-dumb thing she does makes me want to punch a baby. Also, I don't even think she's so talented.]

P90X-treme PAIN

So, clearly this is a season of change for me, as evidenced by last post. But before I started this don't-go-over-in-October thing (and also before I realized PB could get bootleg copies of P90X from a friend of his, I ordered a sketchy Chinese copy of it from Ebay for like fifty bucks. And so far, so good.

Seriously, I have done two workouts in two days and my entire body is becoming PARALYZED. I nearly knocked a girl over with the door at the end of Wills/Trusts/Estates class today because I realized I was too weak to keep holding the heavy door at the exact wrong second. The first day was chest and back, which basically meant doing a variety of push-ups and chin-ups for an hour, and then twenty minutes of abs. Yesterday was plyometrics, which translates to me jumping around like the Easter bunny on crack for an hour. At the beginning of the workout yesterday I was thinking, okay, great, this is good, I can do this. And then very quickly it became, OH GOD, PAIN, TOO MUCH OF THE JUMPING, MIGHT DIE. Also the cat looks at me as if there is something very, very wrong with me while I work out in the bedroom.

I'm not sure the concept is so crazy revolutionary, because really anybody could do push-ups/chin-ups for an hour and jump squats the next day, and other such things like that and definitely get results in 90 days without any kind of formal program like this. But without that annoying Tony Horton telling me what to do, I know I would stop after 2 seconds of push-ups and decide I was just too tired to go on. There are frequently times during the workouts that I holler at the tv - YOU STUPID JERKFACE, I CANNOT DO 30 MORE SECONDS.

I need to take before pictures, but I have yet to get the 'nads to a) do that in the first place or b) post them on the interwebz. Also, that darn camera charger is still MIA. I thought of just ordering a new one, but the chargers are $28 on Amazon, and the camera is a 4.something megapixel Canon Powershot I've had since I graduated from high school four years ago. Considering that you can buy super-awesome cameras for $100 to $150 or so now, I feel like it's ridiculous to spend 30something bucks on a charger for my old one. But then I also feel like a big spoiled brat buying a new camera because I can't find the charger for the other one that works perfectly fine. DILEMMA.

Don't Go Over in October

So I got this from mscareergirl.com, and even though it's already the 5th, we're going to try it. What with the new house, and fall, which makes me want to buy a whole ton of new jeans/boots/expensive pumpkin spice lattes, I have spent roughly 900 million dollars in the past two months. That junk has got to stop. But it's going to be hard, whiiiiiine. Also, I just spent 55 cents on coffee, fail.

Well, anyway, if you want to participate/watch me suffer through this/probably fail at it, here are the rules:

Rules:

1. Participants are forbidden from spending any money on shopping for the month of October. The definition of “shopping” includes but is not limited to: new clothes, shoes, books, accessories, spa treatments, hair/nails, house wares, games, makeup, last minute travel, and anything else you probably can’t afford.

You ARE allowed to buy gifts and necessities. And, to clarify, manicures and highlights are not a necessity in this particular challenge. (Damn, I know.)

2. Participants must create entertainment and food budgets on mint.com and not exceed them.

3. You cannot spend more than you can pay off. Sounds simple, but most young adults today are spending way more than they earn each month.

4. Participants must share their shopping detox experience at least once a week in blog posts highlighting things like: temptations, stories, moods, realizations and ways they’ve lived without.

Purpose:

1. To develop new money habits.
2. To prove that the sky won’t fall if you don’t get a pedicure and buy new shoes this month.
3. To learn that you can still have a great night out without sipping on several $10 martinis…
4. To save a little money for once in your life.
5. To depend more on your fabulous personality and inner self-confidence than on what new things you are wearing.
6. To eliminate impulse and emotional buys- two of women’s biggest spending traps.