Domestic Geek

Once again: I HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!

I'm having a hard time believing that 2006 is already a quarter finished.

I've written on here before about how I'm getting rid of the clutter in my life. Today I tackled a couple of boxes in the craft room. In one of those, I found a baby afghan I started when I found out my supposed "best friend" from school was pregnant...in 1984! It's been sitting in a box that I've been lugging around for almost 22 years. It struck me how that was a symbol of my whole life. I have these dreams, I have all of these plans, yet I never attain them. I never really finish anything. My whole life has been filled with "I should have," "I wish I had done," etc. I put tons of energy into getting started on something (buying supplies, making the plan), but never really getting anything out of it. My whole life is cluttered with unfulfilled ambitions and meaningless junk.

I'm reading a book that my old friend from college got me about 2 years ago. It's called 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace. She saw in me that I struggle with who I am and what I really want to be doing in my life. When she got it for me, I wasn't ready to read it and put in in a drawer. I found it the other day and started reading it. He quoted Tolstoy's character Ivan Ilyich, who said, "What if my whole life has been wrong?" That quote really got me thinking. I'm going to be 40 in a little over five months. I don't want to waste any more time thinking "I wish I could've..." or "Why did I never..." and just make my dreams happen. I'm tired of the excuses I feed myself about why my life is the way it is.

Anyway, I can't remember exactly where I was going with all of this. I guess just that I'm still not in a good place yet. While the job I have now is closer than anything I've ever had to want I want to be doing, it's still not a great fit. I don't have any benefits, the personalities there clash really bad and I'm not making enough money to pay my bills, let alone have any extra to do anything for myself. I'm keeping an eye out for another job while I start freelancing. I'm the most skilled employee and the least paid. Not cool. I just can't let myself stay there because I'm afraid or too lazy to get what I really want. I don't want to make another long-term mistake like pizza was.

I wish I had another day off. I have so much I need to do and work is just getting in the way. I spent a good portion of this weekend shaving the skunk-infused fur off of my dog. I still have some really matted stuff around his neck to get, but he's almost done. Hopefully that incident will never repeat. My house still smells. Ewwww.

Well, I guess I'd better head off to bed. Even though it doesn't feel like 11;20, the clock says it is. Getting up tomorrow is going to be a bitch.

So, guess what Marcus and I have been dealing with the last hour and a half? Bathing the dog. Yep, Skippy managed to encounter a skunk outside. He was in and running around like crazy (like the toe bleeding episode) before Marcus realized what had happened. Now my whole frickin' house reeks. I went to the store for tomato juice and I guess the dog rubbed against me because I stunk up King Soopers. Oh, well. When I got home, Marcus had read on the Internet that tomato juice doesn't work. Yay. You're supposed to bathe them with a mixture of peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. I scrounged what little I had of those ingredients and we went to work. Poor dog is exhausted. Looks like this weekend he gets shaved. He was shedding really bad and now all that hair matted in the tub. What a mess!

It's no secret that I hate Blogrolling. Luckily there haven't been as many problems as there was a year ago, but I wanted the recently updated feature and most times it doesn't work anyway. I still end up going through most of my links to see if anybody has anything new. So, I saw awhile back that Yoshi was working on an Expression Engine Linklist module. He finally finished and released it, so I took the time this weekend to download and try it. I need to figure out how to customize it to my liking, but now I no longer have to watch my site spin while it tries to load stuff from blogrolling.com! I like the little favicons showing up. I need to get off my duff and make one. I used to have one when this place was LaDonnaBlog. Oh, well...someday!

I started working on my design business web site yesterday. Marcus bought me a starter set of business cards. Hopefully I'll be up and running for business by next week. I really need to find a client. Most of the designers I've taked to say they get business by word-of-mouth. Unfortunately, you need clients to get clients! There are some things going on at the job that I really hate, but I've decided not to air work crap here. I will say, however, that I've got some confidence in my design ability now and it's time I start making what my skills are really worth.

I'm poor. It's been a long time since I've been this bad off financially. Marcus says it's the growing pains of escaping pizza and that things will get better. I need to make them better NOW. I don't have money for anything extra...like food. LOL This week I'll be getting rid of everything totally unnecessary on eBay to raise cash. In addition to the necessities in life, I was a vacation, I want to move, I want a monitor that isn't fuzzy, I was a faster Mac. All these darned things take MONEY!

The exercise regimine gets restarted this week. I haven't gained weight, but I am terribly out of shape. Desk jobs suck. I didn't realize how much exercise I got making dough, but a walk around the park with Marcus on Saturday totally kicked my ass! I was so sore yesterday, I could barely move--FROM WALKING! I guess it will be time to resurrect the old Loser blog, too.

OK, my lunch is over, so I had better find something to do here at work.

Man, I so don't want to be here at work today. I've had a really stressful couple of weeks and all I wanted to do was stay home today and get stuff done around the homestead. We're going to be using Filemaker Pro at work in the next week and I'd figure I'd get some research into how that all works done, but I'm just not feeling like it today. I feel icky and I need a nap--BAD! What sucks is I have to be here at least another hour and a half. I'm not gonna make it.

Thanks to my Blingo Friend "ueblay", I got another $10 iTunes gift certificate today! Yayyyyy! So, if you are "ueblay", let me know who you are!

Now, everybody else sign up to be my Blingo Friend, use it and win me an iPod nano!