The last mimzy

We went to see the last mimzy last night, and it was a really cool movie.

Cool effects, good, believable brother/sister relationship (both kids were great in this, the girl was adorable), and just a neat story that is different enough from other movies that have tackled similar topics.

Interestingly, the movie started off in the future about how people had become too isolated, more in touch with technology than with other people, that they lost their humanity in a way. And this is something I've wondered and thought about, you look around you on a bus or a train, everyone is on a cell phone or text messaging, or on their computer or listening to their ipod, in their own world. With online shopping, online groceries (admittedly, I am guilty of both), online banking, movies that you can purchase straight from your tv, etc, it's becoming a world where you not only don't have to leave your house, you don't have to any human interaction at all.

And then I wonder why blogs are so popular these days. It seems like people desperately want a connection with others, want to know they are not alone in things they are facing in their daily lives, glimpsing to see how other people live...but again it is all remote and separate from people in the real world.

While technology can mean great things for people, for the world, it does mean more isolation, and that is a sad road to go down.

Just rambling.

Roadtrip!!

So, I have booked a flight to NC in a few weeks, to check out what it is like there, see if it is a place we could comfortably live, check out what it's like to drive around, trail access for running, all that sort of thing.

I will be there from Tuesday morning through Friday evening, and I'm going without Tim because it would be that much more expensive for both of us to fly out and board myrapup.

But then I was talking to Slunt (my best friend), and she said she would love to go with me. Tim and I talked and said how not only would it be really cool, but it would give us more than just my opinion, I would have more fun, etc. After some back and forthing, and some pleading and cajoling on my end, she will fly down to meet me!

I'll be there Tuesday and Wednesday by myself, and then will pick her up Wed. night and she flies home Fri morning.

I am SO excited. I haven't seen her since Christmas, and we've both been missing each other. Plus, whenever I go back east, I usually only have one evening to spend with her, so it will be nice to get more time with her. And other than when I traveled in Europe, I've never been on a girlfriend road trip, so it just made the trip a lot more fun.

Hooray!!

Scattegories!

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They MUST be real places, names, things -- NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name: Kelly
Famous Music Artist/Group: Kylie Minogue
3 letter word: kid
Colour: kelly green
Gifts/Presents: kinky lingerie
Vehicle: Kit, from Knight Rider (courtesy Tim)
TV Show: King of Queens
Boy Name: Kyle
Girl Name: Kaylen
Alcoholic Drink: Kamikaze
Occupation: Keymaker
Flower:
Celebrity: Kiera Knightly (ha! 2 in one, and she's hot!)
Food: kale
Something found in a kitchen: ketchup
Reason for Being Late: kidnapped
Something You Shout: Kiss me!

Erg. K is a tough one!! (Ps, I had some help from Tim, with Tv show and color)

On being a drinking lightweight

It's no surprise that I've always been not much into drinking. It affects me really quickly, it makes my stomach bloat out, and it makes me really sleepy.

I started to wonder if I was allergic to alcohol.

And then this weekend when I confirmed that I don't handle gluten or wheat well at all, well, I really am allergic to alcohol!

There are times when my no-drinking made me feel lame, or not really fitting in, or not joining in on parties and such. I used to feel a little out of place with Tim, especially at first, because he was used to going out to get a drink with friends, and I just never really had any interest in being around alcohol.

I don't feel that way anymore, and pretty much everyone doesn't care, it's just weird how you feel left out and different because you don't do something that just about everybody else does, even if it is only in your mind.

Black and chocolate

We need a chocolate lab, I think...

processed sugar, wheat = BAD

I think I have found my food culprits, and it looks like I am a celiac (gluten intolerant) who can't handle processed sugar.

I had falafel on a white roll yesterday to begin introducing wheat. While my stomach didn't bloat as quickly as it did after eating ice cream, it did eventually, and it lasted for hours. We had lunch at 2 at Genies, by 8 p.m. my stomach was still bloated.

It finally calmed down, and I decided not to continue my wheat test any further that day, I will try whole wheat stuff on Monday.

We went to New Seasons to get milk and such, and I decided to try another sugar test (previously, dairy was fine, but ice cream, very bad). I found a vegan, spelt chocolate chip cookie, and figured this would be a good test because it wouldn't have wheat or dairy in it, but it had processed sugar.

OMG. Within five minutes of having a couple bites of the cookie, my stomach bloated to a huge and painful point. It still hurts this morning.

It looks like I will no longer be having processed sugar and will be sticking to baked goods made with maple syrup or honey. Owie. We'll see what happens with the whole wheat test on monday, but if the white roll is any indication, wheat is out as well. At least there are tons of gluten free products now.

Trees!

I love trees, I feel a connection to them. I say hello to trees. I will stop and put my hand on them and say a silent greeting. I will hug trees. In some of the trees around here, I can see faces, especially in the forests, and I instantly make up stories about tree people and fairies and the lives they lead. I will stop and stare at trees that I think are particularly lovely.

So, when I found this, you can imagine how thrilled I was (found via Magpie and Cake and Neatorama.com).

I don't like the circus trees as much, because it looks like it would have hurt the trees to grow like that (and I'm sure the tree designer didn't think of that), but the other ones. Just wow. The aspens in Utah that are all one organism is really impressive. The tree in Monterey looks lonely and proud. The mexican Tule Tree. Swoon.

You have probably seen the book, places to see before you die? Well, I've looked at it, and I don't really need to see all the places in there, but I have decided my list of places to see includes meeting all these trees.

Happy Spring!

We have officially past the spring equinox and are now legally allowed to say it is spring, even though it has been spring here in Portland for well over a month.

Every time I walk Myra through the neighborhood, there are more flowers blooming, more cherry blossoms and magnolia trees. Daffodils, tulips, happy little purple flowers, trees with new leaves budding, and still more flowers. I make mental paintings every time I'm outside.

I love the energy of spring, I love watching everything come to life, feeling like I want to be outside as much as possible (of course the weather is being a tease, we got a couple of great, warm days, then it went back to being cool or rainy).

It's also the season of impossibly cute stuffed animals, I'm trying to resist the urge to buy lots of cute chicks and sheep. And of course, Peep Day (otherwise known as Easter) is coming up. I've never been much into halloween, I don't really like halloween candy all that much (other than candy corn), and it just seems like an excuse for adults to get drunk and act stupid in costumes.

Easter on the other hand. I love easter candy. Peeps, jelly beans, the cadbury eggs (although I can only eat those in very small doses). And of course, now that I'm adding food back in, I have made the decision that I really don't want to add much sugar back in, because I like not having a lot of sugar. We'll see how good my willpower is -- I just don't want to get re-addicted to sugar, so it's easier to not have any. Stupid good candy holiday :p

wanna see how fast I can run?

Yesterday, I had a great wellness exercise class, we ran to the track and did a lot of sprints. We would sprint the straight away, then do an easy walk or jog on the corners. We would run a few laps at normal pace, then go back to the sprinting.

I felt like I was flying, and like I was back in school, trying to see how fast I can run. (Sidenote, in elementary school, I was the fastest kid in the school for a very little while. I beat out the fastest boy once. It was cool!) I have absolutely gotten faster and stronger, and it was so much fun to just really push it and see how hard I could run.

"Yeah, I run like a girl. Try to keep up!" From one of the best t-shirts I've seen in a long time, and I need to find it and buy it.

Dairy and tomatoes....

are in!!

I started adding food back on Saturday, adding dairy first. No problems with dairy at all. I even had a really little bit (less than 1/4 cup) of chocolate ice cream, and let me tell you, it tasted HEAVENLY. My stomach got a little bloaty, but that might have been from having sugar for the first in over a month. And even that didn't last long.

Yesterday, I had rice pasta with tomato sauce and parm cheese, and it was probably the best meal I've had in ages, just because it was so normal. Again, no problems from the tomatoes. Today I will have something with salsa for lunch, and then make tomato pesto for dinner (my signature dish, the best pasta sauce ever). I only had tomatoes once yesterday, so I need to have a little bit more to confirm I don't have problems with it.

But even just adding back in dairy and tomatoes makes a huge difference.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add caffeine back in, and I really don't want to add a lot of sugar back in, but at least some more food options have opened up. Yay!

happiness, audio style

Tim: Did I hear the sound of happiness calling?

Me: I don't know, what does happiness sound like?

Tim: It goes drip drip drip, then crescendos into a gurgle then goes beep beep beep.

Yes, my boy is quite possibly the biggest coffee head ever.

so....I might be going back to my old job...

I filled in for the director of communications last week while she was out of town. The week went really well, no emergencies (fortunately) and just had a chance to work on some projects.

It felt really different from the last time I was there as an employee. It even felt different from one of the last times I went up as a freelancer for meetings. Most of the negative people are gone, in fact only one negative person is left up there. There is a new team up there, and they seem like they work well together.

Now, I know what you are thinking....I left because how bad things were, how it was affecting me, my health, blah blah. Well, yes, that is all true. But there's also the hard-to-find-a-job factor. (But I promise I wouldn't even consider it if it felt the same up there).

So, I just happened to mention it to one of the marketing folks, and she jumped all over it. To the point where she actually called HR and found out they can essentially re-offer me the job, without me needing to apply or anything, I would need to go through required training again.

I called the director of communications to explain what happened, and she said she wanted to talk to me about some new opportunities anyway.

So, we'll see what happens, but it looks like I might be back there soon, which would be good for several reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that EVERY SINGLE MONTH I have to fight to get paid. My invoices won't get processed, or they don't go through, or some nonsense. Case in point, I submitted my january invoice on Feb. 2. I got my check today -- because they forgot to process it, and I had to call, and have the admin call and track it down. Then there's the fact that my freelancing work hasn't been steady, in fact February, I had hardly any billable hours. Not easy to pay bills on that. I would really like having a steady paycheck.

The sad state of television

I just saw a preview for this new show, Notes from the Underbelly. It's all about being pregnant. This is a comedy. Their big comedy bits...a woman is getting an epidural and asks her friends who are in the room with her if the needle is big, and they all lie. Wow, that's hi-larious. The other big comedy bit..."wow, you're like a different person since you got pregnant."

Really? Is this supposed to make me want to watch this? Cuz it looks pretty dumb and lame-ass. And not all that funny.

Can ANYONE get a tv pilot these days?

Me as an MandM

So, I LOVE the new MandM commercial, where people become an MM. So, being a girl easily swayed by marketing, I went to becomeanMM.com and VOILA!

Red hair, blond eye brows, librarian glasses and bitch boots. Oh, yeah and my ipod headphones. Pretty accurate actually. And fun!

Let's go kill some birds. I'm psyched

Just watched Wedding crashers.

Several things:

The parts that were funny, were really funny, although it felt draggy in a lot of places. But some great lines!

I hate Will Ferrell.

I LOVE Rachel McAdams. She is WAY up there on my girl crush list. And the girl who played her sister, also way up there.

It reminded me a little of the Wedding Singer meets Meet the Fockers (or the first movie there, I know there were two).

Even if the general story was predictable, and the pacing of the movie was a bit weird sometimes, I'm definitely glad we watched it :)

2 hour workout!!!

Today, I loaded up my shuffle with a tough Cardio Coach workout (these are great, it's like having a personal trainer in your ear, giving you challenges like sprints and hill climbs, all based on your perceived exertion, so you get a great workout) and went to Tryon Creek. Lots of sprints, and six minutes of hill climbs at close to my max heart rate, lots of fun.

I headed back to the Nature Center to stretch and do some pushups, when I ran into some of the women from my Saturday exercise class. They were just about to start a class, and I was feeling good, so I joined them for workout number two, and Amy took us on a long, hilly run.

Amazingly, I felt GREAT during both workouts, and ended up running for almost two hours, with a bunch of push ups, ab work, plies and leg work added in.

It was warm out, so I was running in shorts, and ended up caked in mud all over my legs.

One of the best runs I've had maybe ever. GRIN!

laZy day

We went to the 10:45 showing of 300 last night, and as a result didn't get to bed till after 1 a.m. I got up with Myra at 6:30, set my alarm to see if I could go to class, promptly shut it off when it went off, climbed back into bed and slept till 10:30. Then the three of us proceeded to take a family nap for about three hours after we took Myra to the school to play for a while.

So...let me recap...sleep, more sleep, playing with myra, more sleep.

Yeah, that counts as lazy.

300 and being a snob

We went to see 300 last night...holy shit it was intense and awesome! Totally deserving of the hype, it was probably the biggest movie to have come out recently. We were cheering, we were cringing, and totally hoping that somehow the 300 would live in the end...

"THIS.IS.SPARTA!!!!!!!"

And the fact that there is a Legolas/Gimli type of relationship between two of the fighters was great.

As for being a snob, we went to one theater out on the Rt.1 kind of street (SE 82nd...walmarts, lots of RV places, just kind of...tacky). The show was sold out there, but we felt kind of dirty with the people who were there, and didn't really want to watch it there anyway. So, I think we are officially snobs, because we left that theater and went to the chi-chi, swanky theater at the swanky, yuppy outdoor shopping place and much preferred it.

Cool side of the pillow

When I was little, I always went to bed with Ted and Quilt. Quilt was a small quilt with flowers on one side and patches with disney characters on the other side. I would always spread Quilt out over my pillow and would wake a few times during the night to switch Quilt to the other, cooler side.

While I still have Ted, and will still sleep with him on occasion (although now I rotate with one of my two ellies that Mik gave me), Quilt has long since fallen apart and was eventually thrown away. But I still love when I find the cool side of the pillow, it is a quiet small comfort in the night.

What are your small comforts or things you like when you are sleeping?

the me who is not me

Between my skin and not sleeping and still waiting to hear about the job and having really no work to do at all, I have definitely not been "me" lately. I'm sure I've been mildly depressed, which I'm sure has been contributing to my lack of desire to do stuff (well, that and not sleeping much for a week). The fact that I've still been exercising pretty consistently is more from my desire to not lose ground aerobically than any real strong desire to exercise.

But tonight...it went away. My head feels normal. I feel more aware and alert. I'm sure it helps that I broke out the wonder skin medicine. But it's nice to feel like me again :)

one step forward...one leap backwards

Sigh.

So, the diet. Stomach-wise, it is going really, really well. No bloating, no pain, none of the other problems I was having before.

But my skin.

My poor, wrecked skin. It's just not getting better. I've been on the diet for over two weeks now, and the first few days, my skin broke out horribly, and I went back on my skin medicine for a few days to clear up the worst of it. I've been off my skin medicine for over a week now and there has been no improvement.

I don't mean I have pimples or anything. I have large, angry red welts that virtually cover my back, arm and chest. My back is more red and blotchy and covered in welts than there are skin colored bits. It itches. It hurts to shower. It hurts to put on moisturizer. I'm not sleeping well because I feel like my skin is crawling at night.

And my poor face. I've told Tim countless times over the last few days how ugly I feel. I have bright red blotches on my face, and my lips are red and peeling from just under my nose to well below my bottom lip. The only thing I am grateful for is that I don't have the welts and raised spots that I have everywhere else. My face just looks I got a sunburn in several weird places.

I'm seeing the naturopath again on Thursday, to see what she recommends. If she doesn't have anything to help me, I'm going to go to a different dermatologist. I just don't know what to do at this point.

:(

Whooo!

First run of the year in shorts! And I did more than 4 miles, my longest street run since I had horrible shin splints last spring and had to take two months off from running altogether. I've done long runs in Tryon Creek, but I have no idea the mileage (plus trail running is just easier on the body all around).

Yay for being back in good running form again!

the house we want

We are going to look at the house and the neighborhood today, but from the listing, we absolutely love it.

If things go well, this could very well end up being the house we try to buy.

The house we love

Change your focus....and poof! Things aren't so hard

Once again, as soon as we decided to confront a problem that has been lingering over our heads, it instantly isn't a problem anymore.

Let me explain.

For years now, the State of Maine has insisted that Tim owed them taxes for the year 2000, even though he lived in Massachusetts for all of that year. He had previously submitted all kinds of paperwork to them, his Mass tax return and federal tax return for that year, his lease in Massachusetts, etc.

But Maine kept insisting he owed them money.

We've ignored it for a long time. At one point, Tim called someone he knew in Maine who was an accountant, but we never did anything further.

But one by one, we've been knocking off outstanding stuff that has just been hanging over our heads, and each time, it's not as bad as we feared, and in most cases, it instantly got better. In some cases, the answer appeared as soon as we decided to address the problem.

So Tim decided it was time to deal with Maine. He was going to call the accountant he knows in Maine, find out how to get a lawyer in Maine and pay the lawyer to contact the State Department. He was preparing to go find all that paperwork again.

And so he went to look at one of the letters that Maine sent him (assuming it was just one of the bills they keep sending). The letter said that the State department had reviewed the paperwork Tim had submitted and accepted them. There is a $0 balance and Tim doesn't owe them any money.

That's it. Poof. Problem gone. We've had this letter for months, but never looked at it (part of us ignoring stuff), just assuming it was one of the bills.

Once you face the problems and challenges in your life, I think they have a lot less hold over you, and you can get through them...sometimes easier than others, but they really won't go away until you confront them.

who were you? Who are you now?

Several things have come up recently that got me thinking about who I used to be when I was younger (in grade school and later), and how I've changed.

We watched the Bridge to Terabithia a few weeks ago (not at all how it is advertised -- the fantasy elements are actually a fairly small portion of the movie, and what you see in the previews is almost everything you actually see in the movie for the Terabithia stuff). Most of the movie focuses on the kids' lives at home and at school, how they are picked on for being outsiders and different.

I was that kid in grade school, in junior high, high school. I was always picked last in gym class. I was picked on by bullies. I hated riding the bus, because kids would pick on me. I would always try to sit up as close to the driver as possible with my nose buried in a book, hoping the bullies would just leave me alone.

And on a message board I frequent, one of the women said that her 8 year old daughter asked why no one likes her.

I was that kid too. I had friends, but more often than not, they excluded me. I always had to call them, and ask them to do stuff, it was not returned. I was the loud, silly girl, who cut off all her hair and wore mismatched earrings and loud/bright/odd clothes who always said she didn't care what people thought of her, but inside I was so shy, and always felt like I had no real friends, and that no one really knew me. I was invisible to guys, and always acted like I didn't care that I wasn't going to prom or anything like that. But I did care.

Today, at almost 30, I am worlds away from that sad, insecure girl. I have friends who I know will be there for me no matter what, friends who I know love me and know who I really am.

I have Tim and a wonderful, happy life with him.

Today, I am confident about speaking up for myself. I can honestly say I like who I am today. And I can say and mean that now I really don't care what other people think of me. The people who matter know who I am, flaws and all, and that's the important thing.

And the kid who was never athletic, who never played team sports, is a runner and a hiker and gets asked to play on recreational soccer leagues.

There is still a part of me that is shy, especially in group situations, the little girl who was always the wallflower at parties and dances is still there, but I know how to talk to people until I feel comfortable.

Who were you? Who are you now?