Girlwonder007.com

Tiring

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:28:51 -0500

So, lots has been going on as of late, some of which I'm happy about, some of which I could do without.

List form!
~My job is trying to kill me--we've been visiting a lot of large families as of late, and none of them have lived close to IC.
~Heath's ex-wife decided to pull some bullshit yesterday, saying that she had a right to some plants that were here, because her name is still on the mortgage. After quite a bit of fighting with Heath about this(because she knows EXACTLY how to play him, and get her way), she still came and got them, but we've accelerated the process of getting him a re-fi to drop her off of the mortgage. Part of the divorce decree is that the house, and everything left with it is his, the only reason she hadn't been taken off yet, is because the house is on the market, and he was waiting until the contract was up. At this point, it is looking like he'll no longer be waiting, so that we don't have a situation like this happen again. I don't deal with 2 year olds who throw temper tantrums, I'm not going to put up with a 32 year old who does the same. Every single one of the plants could have been bought AT THE STORE with the alimony that he pays her on a monthly basis, and yesterday was my last straw of tolerance for her bullshit.
~I'm all set and ready to go back to school in the fall. The nursing program at Kirkwood is going to work out great for me, and I'm really, truly excited about my prospects. Now, I just have to figure out what my part-time job situation is going to be, and a lot of that is waiting on seeing if my boss can get additional grant money. If he can, I'll be staying on to do the admin/recruitment.
~Several of my friends are getting married this summer/fall, and it's kind of keeping me crazy busy. I'm heading out to NE this weekend, to help one of my friends with the last minute details. My friends that are getting married are doing so in reverse order of engagements, so things are a bit crazy around here with all the planning.
~Speaking of road trips, I have a car! I don't remember if that went into my last entry. It's small, gets great mileage, and runs really well. Overall, I'm QUITE happy with it, given how much having two cars has simplified our lives.

That's it for now. Hopefully now that things are progressing in many aspects of my life, I'll start feeling less stressed soon.

Every month

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:26:46 -0500

I say that I'm going to get better about blogging. After that, I churn out two posts, and call it good for the month. Anyway, I feel like lists are a good way to get caught up, so here goes.

~Last month, I applied for nursing school, put in my resignation from my current job, and generally felt better about life. My last day is July 31st, and I find out at the end of the week if it will be feasible for me to stay on part-time, doing recruitment and admin work.
~The garden is still going strong, much to the chagrin of the cats whose space it has invaded.
~I have a car! It's a 2003 Hyundai Accent, 46k, manual transmission, and a clean title. I'm pretty much in love with it, and plotting out all of my different road trips that I've been storing in my head as a result. The first one will probably be to Nebraska, to help a friend plan her wedding.
~The house still hasn't sold, but due to us finally getting a living room, I've been obsessively watching HGTV. So far, we've upped the curb appeal, decorated one of the more empty rooms(the living room), and started painting. There's a lot more rooms to paint, but we've also got an open house this weekend, so after this one is done, we'll probably wait until next week at the earliest to get started on anything else. If our lawn doesn't green up(thank you dogs!), we will be buying some lawn spray paint, and faking it.
~Anyone know anything about carpet repair?

Garden Update #1!

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:39:27 -0500

OK, so I know that it's only been a day, but we've already made some changes--after doing some reading on the Learn2Grow website, I realized that our seedlings were too far from the lights, which would cause them to work too hard, and get spindly. After digging through the garage, we found a bunch of rubbermaid totes, and we've since flipped them upside down on the table, and put all the seedlings on top. This makes it so they're about a foot from the lights--I wish we could get them a little closer, but this will have to do.

We now have a space heater in the growing area of the basement, because the temperature was 66 degrees in there, which is a little cold for seedlings. As this project expands, I think we might be getting some tarps to hang up, so that we can keep the heat in, and maybe the cats out--I'm a bit terrified that they're going to find this fantastic new soil, and want to use it as a litterbox--especially since it's in the same room as the litterboxes.

Additionally, the broccoli REALLY took off overnight, along with some of the other seedlings, so they've been moved to a different tray, labelled, and are sitting under the lights as well. I'm a bit worried about some of the seeds, because I've seen no signs of life yet, but I have to remind myself to be patient. Our first day of planting seeds was on 2/28, so to have as many seedlings sprouted in 9 days as we have is pretty amazing.

Next project? A red worm composting bin. I found the project on Learn2Grow, and besides the investment of the redworms, we already have everything we need--this will be a great way to do year-round soft compost(think foods). Plus, I'm pretty sure we did this project when I was in 3rd grade. Worms still gross me out, but hey, that's what Heath is for, right? We'll still have to setup an outdoor compost for all of the green waste(grass clippings, weeds, etc), but I'll worry about that more once it gets warmer.

Channelling my grandmother...

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:29:58 -0600

When I was little, my mom and I lived with my grandparents. Nana was the crazy gardener of the family--17 or 18 separate plots on the 1.5 lots that she owned. Veggies, rocks, flowers, bushes, you name it, she grew it.

Since Heath is trying to sell the house, doing an in-ground garden would be stupid--the last thing I want to do is commit the manhours to growing food, and find out before the end of summer that we're losing the harvest because the house has sold. After a lot of research into container gardening, I set out for our seeds.

Things may have gotten a little out of hand, but we now have TWENTY-FOUR different types of veggies and flowers growing, in 5.5 seed flats. They're kind of taking over our house--on the dresser in our bedroom, or on the dining room table. For those of you doing the math, we have 352 seedlings in process, all of which can be seen in the pictures below...

The germination time on all of them varies between 8 days and 30 days--the snap peas were the first to make an appearance, and the first to grow out of their space. Heath had some gardening supplies, as well as full-spectrum lighting from his ex's previous orchid hobby, which meant that after a trip to Lowe's today, it was time to transplant the snap peas, so they would stop hitting the top of the seedling boxes. Several hours later, we had a space in the basement setup with the lighting, and the seedlings(as well as some strawberry plants) planted. I'm excited for the results, but at the same time, wondering where we're going to put all the plants...some more lighting may be in order.

And in case you were wondering what all we're growing, here's the list.

Artichoke, Emerald
Basil, Sweet
Broccoli
Carrot, Short and Sweet
Chives
Columbine, William Guinness
Columbine, Barlow Doubles Mix, Perennial
Columbine, Harlequin Mix, Perennial
Johnny Jumpup, Perennial
Onion, Sweet Spanish Yellow utah
Oregano
Parsley, Single Italian
Peas, Sugar Snap
Pepper, California Wonder
Pepper, Cascabella
Pepper, Jalapeno
Portulaca Magic Carpet Mix, Annuals
Rosemary
Sage, Broad Leaf
Salvia, Blue bedder, Perennial
Thyme
Tomato, Black from Tula
Tomato, Red Cherry
Tomato, Roma

/End channeling the dead grandmother...

GAAAAAH

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:22:37 -0600

I am eating two desserts tonight, because my day sucked so incredibly much today.

FINALLY unpacking...

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:48:14 -0600

When I first moved in with Heath, it wasn't clear what action his ex-wife would seek, regarding the house. We decided to work under the assumption that we would be selling the house, and move into Iowa City, as we both work there, and live the majority of the fun parts of our lives there. As a result, 90% of my stuff has been sitting in boxes, in the garage, since November. Now, it's March, the house has not sold yet, nor does it look like it's going to in the near future, and I'm just itching to unpack/decorate.

I've managed to quell the decoration bug, because we really don't know where we'll be with this house in 6 months, but we made the decision yesterday that I would finally unpack my belongings. Either I unpack, and the house sells because I dared tempt the market, or I unpack, and I'm happier because I have easy access to my things. Either way, a win-win, one option will just require a bit more work. After a quick trip to Menards to pick up some shelves, we went out for dinner at Devotay to celebrate the divorce. After stuffing ourselves full(because I woke up this morning, and wasn't hungry for THREE HOURS), we came home, settled in, and played some video games.

At 9 pm last night, I decided it was time to hang the shelves. A normal person would say, oh, I've had sangria, let's wait until the morning. Instead, I operate on my typical policy of "it's in my head, let's get it done." After some quick calculations, measuring, and finding the correct tools, I now have 5 shelves in my office.

Since I'm working late tonight, I've been spending the morning unpacking. You would think that after moving 8 times since June 2007, I would no longer have extra CRAP that has just been following me around, but yet again, I'm finding some. So, not only am I tempting the market by making it so there is more in the house for me to pack, but I will end up with less to pack the next time we move, and the garage is ending up clean. Really can't complain about this.

And it's done...

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:47:06 -0600

Heath and his ex-wife are officially divorced--after being separated for over a year, and he and I dating for almost 8 months of that year, all I can say is it's about time.

There have been a lot of projects going on around here as of late--project sell-the-house, project container garden, and project Nicole needs to unpack before going crazy.

Tonight, we had an $85 dinner to celebrate. I think the sangria is settling into my brain. More later, when I'm less sleepy.

The inner hippie

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:58:04 -0600

For years, I have made fun of my mom for being a hippie. She's the most likely person I know to do things like buy multiple pairs of birkenstocks, and show up to work wearing a flowey skirt and peasant shirt. While she was born in the 60's, she would have fit in better if her formative years had actually been in the 60's, instead of the 70's.

That being said, I've made two major steps towards embracing my inner hippie in the past week. First off, Maria went to MN, and brought back two solid shampoo bars from Lush. I love these for a few reasons. They require no packaging, so there's nothing to be recycled in the end, they last as long as a bottle and a half of regular shampoo, and they are 100% vegetarian, which means that none of the chemicals that irritate my psoriasis get anywhere near my skin.

This morning, I got notice of a partner yoga class from the yoga academy that I had been attending in the past. As usual, I IMed Heath to make sure he wanted to go, and then signed us up. The lead instructor at my yoga academy emailed me back to tell me that we were in, and then asked me if I wanted to sign up for the yoga instructor training course. Both my coworker and her husband had taken this course during it's first session, and loved it. I started thinking about it, knowing how much they paid, and knew that it would be a good idea. I asked for more information, only to find out that the class had gone up in cost by nearly double a month. This had me taken aback, but after discussing it with everyone who would be interested, and really nailing out my finances, I knew that taking the class would be the right decision for me. I am fascinated by everything under the sun when it comes to yoga, and there are a lot of people that take the course in order to further their yoga mastery--I intend to fall more under this category, than to become a steady instructor. I expect to learn a lot of things, both about myself, and about yoga, and to improve my health more than I already have. All in all, I'm looking forward to the experience, but if you had told me two years ago that I'd be using solid shampoo to minimize environmental impact, and taking coursework to become a yoga instructor, I would have laughed until I was blue in the face. Now? It's not so bad.

I would like one thing right now...

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:00:54 -0600

A singular spring-like day, in the middle of all of this snow.

It snowed again last night, and quite a bit more than I had expected. Reya, who loves the snow, hopped off of the stairs, and landed with her chest in the snow because it was so deep.

When I got home last night, I finally caved, and shoveled the driveway. Heath has a Suburu Outback, and generally, with the AWD, it can get over anything. Not yesterday. I got stuck in the bottom of the driveway twice, and had to hit 4000 rpm to get over the mountain the snow plows had created. It was his turn to shovel this morning, and given how much snow was on him when he was done, I think the one thing I want to buy in the next year is a snowblower.

We have had to cancel so many travel days due to weather that we're not scheduling any new visits until we can get these rescheduled--which basically means that my schedule for February and March, while it looks open, is going to be hell at the rate of cancellations that we've been having.

sigh

Sunday Afternoons

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:02:52 -0600

Sunday afternoons in our house have slowly but surely turned into our cooking times. Heath has been perfecting a chili recipe for several weeks now--the base of it can be found here, but it's definitely not what we have ended up with. Unless you like VERY HOT chili, the chipotle peppers and sauce add way too much zing.

I typically sit here, and weigh/measure all of my food for the upcoming week. I started doing Weight Watchers with the rest of the world--on New Year's Day. So far, I've lost 3.5 pounds, but my official weigh-in for their tracking isn't until tomorrow. Things I have learned so far?

~Most WW recipes taste exactly the same as the full calorie stuff.

~Shirataki Tofu noodles, no matter how much Hungry Girl talks about them, have the consistency of very long, overcooked calamari. In essence, they aren't edible. A good substitute for some people, but I don't think I'll be over to get over the texture thing.

~I usually hit the end of the day with way too many points left over, and have a huge dessert. Makes it feel a lot less like a diet, and a lot more like I'm just enjoying my food.

Last night, I had a fantastic foodie pizza, because of how many points I had left. Whole wheat pita, red pepper hummus, mozzarella and feta cheese, with andouille sausage on top. Overall, when it comes to food, things are going well. Life? Life is going well too. The adjustment back to working after taking two weeks off was tough, but I'm feeling pretty good about my job, and until I really really despise it/pay off some debt, I'm not planning on going anywhere else. When I do, it's likely back to school for me.

/endramble.

An update

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:56:15 -0600

I've now migrated all of the posts from the old database to the new one, now it's just a matter of waiting to see if I'm going to get hacked again. As you may notice, some of my photos are missing, and none of the comments came with me. It's been a long day, hopefully this works.

Lots of changes

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:53:19 -0600

Anybody who has been here in the past week has probably noticed several websites going up, and down. Up and down. This is my last attempt at keeping a site at this address, due to the fact that I am currently being linked to by two hacker related forums. In the case that the site does go down again, contact information will be available after the site has been hit, and those of you that I know will get the new blog address.

sigh Now that that frustration is out of the way, hi! How is everyone?

A Day of Unexpecteds

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:51:00 -0600

Originally, we were planning on leaving no later than 9. We didn't leave Iowa City until 11:15.

I have had the same Dell Craptitude laptop that I was given my junior year for well over three years, and in the past 4 days, it has thrown more BSOD errors than I thought possible. Everytime, a different one, despite sticking my troubleshooting boyfriend on it.

At 10:15 this morning, a split second decision was made to buy a netbook to replace the Dell. An hour later, I was walking out of BestBuy with an eeePC 1000hd. So far, it's pretty awesome, except for the placement of the right-side shift key.

We spent an hour in Nebraska going less than 50 mph, due to ice. This was extremely painful.

In past years, I have driven upwards of 9-10 out of the 12 hours this trip takes. This year, I have driven 2.

Soon, I am done travelling for a week, and I get to spend the entire week with two of my favorite people in that I get to see once every 1-2 years.

And I'm spent...

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:51:00 -0600

Or, at least my ability to make peppermint bark is. Tomorrow is the office holiday party, and we're all supposed to bring some food. Not wanting to buy anything to do such a thing, I decided to start on the christmas peppermint bark process. Thankfully, it's in the negatives outside, so it takes about 5 minutes per layer.

Want to know what else is awesome? Heath cleaned up the entire mess for me. Otherwise, I'd be falling asleep while pushing a broom. It's definitely one of those projects where brute force is necessary, food goes flying everywhere, and when you make four batches in the same night? It's a HUGE mess.

Baby, it's Cold Outside

nospam@example.com (Nicole) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:47:00 -0600

So, here we are, in the first week of December, and the lows are hitting single digits, and the snowfall happening nearly every day. A repeat of last year? Possible.

It's weird to look back to a year ago, and see how different my life is now, compared to then. I'm sitting in the kitchen, browsing the internet, with two dogs in the living room, and a quiet house. I don't think my time living with James was ever quiet--whether it was the constant tv, the wind blowing around the house, or him talking to me--last year, I didn't have time to think.

Now, I get to do it all the time.

Last night was Heath's company party. I had a really good time meeting the guys that he works with, as well as the significant others. A girl that was in my orientation group at Cornell(in 2003) now dates his officemate, so we caught up on the past 5.5 years. The night was fun--great dinner, open bar, a casino night and auction. I walked away with a $25 gift card, and a video game for the PS3. We were supposed to stay overnight at the Sheraton downtown, but after 4 hours of attempting to sleep, and failing miserably, we decided to make the trek home. I'm glad that we did. Having a sleep number bed has spoiled both of us, but it means that we sleep better than we would normally.

Now, it's 6:40, and we have a birthday party to go to. I'm working my way through a mocha, in an attempt to stay awake, and I'm not sure that it'll do the trick. Between the extreme cold, the lack of sleep, and the constant sinus issues, I just want to go to bed.