Yeah, I’m online, procrastinating house cleaning again. It’s not like it’ll take me an extreme amount of time to get done, we keep a pretty clean house, as it is. I’m having our friends over for dinner & games tonight, so I just want to get everything tidied up a bit before they all get here. I also need to get candle wax out of the living room carpet, because I’m a moron & didn’t think about dripping wax when I lit a candle yesterday. I know there’s an easy method to get it out, I just need to do a little research before I attempt it.

I’m in the middle of doing my laundry, too, since I have nothing to wear right now. I didn’t actually put that off intentionally, there were things in the washer & dryer most of the week, from all of us putting stuff off, and when I finally got caught up on that, Rhi needed to do her laundry, so I put that in the dryer yesterday & started mine, which puts me behind again. If I want to wear my new shirt this evening, I need to get my favorite jeans washed & dried before then. At least my bedroom is nice & clean, so I can sit in here, be lazy & have comforting surroundings!

I think I watch too much crime TV these days, I can’t sit through commercials talking about life insurance rates without wondering how many spouses are out there, watching & planning with bad intent. I made a vow to myself, many years ago, to never have a policy on myself, because I was in a bad relationship & scared that if he had monetary reason, he would kill me. Currently, I think all I have is a burial policy, mostly because my dying wouldn’t place Troy in a financial bind, so we just never considered insuring me. At any rate, the thought of it makes me nervous, I’m not sure I’ll ever overcome that fear.

We’ve been sucking up all of the fun we can this weekend, or at least it seems that way. We’ve gone swimming, played Rock Band & tonight will have dinner guests, watch True Blood with them & then play something else. We have a lot to do this week before Troy’s work week starts again, so we really like to take advantage of our weekends these days.

Tomorrow, we have a ton of paperwork we need to sit down & go over very carefully, signing where we can & marking where we need a notary to witness our signatures. When we’re done with that Troy needs to get in touch with a friend of his about a car he’s trying to buy & if they won’t work with him, we need to see about a loan to get him a used car so I’m not stuck here with nothing when he’s at work or what have you.

I have to find time sometime this week to start gathering online insurance quotes for myself. I need to get my car insured in my name & have been thinking of renters insurance (as I’ve mentioned in the past). I know I can’t afford private health insurance or even COBRA, so I’m just going to have to really hope I don’t get sick with anything that will cost thousands of dollars to treat. I’m just going to go with the best rates I can get for the car & renters stuff, I’m sure I can get a good deal.

Well, I need to eat something, my tummy is rumbling in protest at being empty.

I’ve been talking for quite awhile about getting some renters’ insurance, because really, we have a lot of nice things that we’d never be able to replace if anything happened to them (note to probable stalkers/burglars: I also have a German Shepherd who doesn’t like strangers), especially since we gave up all of our credit cards & filed bankruptcy. What I think I’d really like is to find a company that offers a reasonable quote for it that will let me upgrade to homeowners insurance when I inherit my parents’ house, so I don’t have to change insurers, you know?

So I guess I’ll wait to make a commitment on it until I can get some quotes & figure it out a bit more. I hate having to deal with financial shit all the time, I’d rather just be independently wealthy, have a great body & an accountant to deal with it all while I played in the French Riviera. If only we could all have the lives we dream of, right?

I’m not quite ready to make my “little” announcement (and NO, I’m not pregnant!), I’m just not prepared to face the probable criticism from the general public yet, I think. I’m not under the illusion that I have such a huge readership that I’ll be cast negatively into the limelight or any such nonsense, but I do know that people who don’t personally know me or my situation won’t be likely to understand exactly what is going on & why. People tend to criticize what they don’t understand. I know I will, at some point have to talk about it, but I’m just not ready yet, sorry.

I have lately had to start thinking about getting myself some health insurance, to last me until I qualify for a Medicare plan, since I have vision & dental issues that can’t be ignored (I have early onset macular degeneration & periodontal disease) and are fairly costly to treat on my own. I don’t really know how I’m going to afford it, but I’m going to have to find a way, I guess. I don’t need more stress right now, that’s for sure, so I think I’ll just worry about it when I have to & let it ride for now.

Last night was another late night, but so worth it. We played Rock Band until 2:30 this morning & we all had a blast. I can’t wait until Rock Band 3 comes out, it really looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. We all get to having fun together & no one wants to quit, that’s just one of the things I love about my best friends. I’m really looking forward to our camping trip next weekend, it’ll be our last one up the mountain for the season, so it’s a little bittersweet, too, but I think we’re all excited about it.

There isn’t much else going on around here, just taking care of the every day stuff & trying to get another vehicle, so we both have something to drive & neither of us is stuck here without transportation. My parents lost both of their dogs last week, which was very sad. Sugar passed on the 1st, from some complications she was having with her liver & Ginger died on the 6th, after she got tangled up in some wire during a thunderstorm & cut her throat open. I was very sad about Ginger, since we almost adopted her instead of Tiny’s mom & I had always come out & loved on her & she was always happy to see me. They are sad & missing their pups, but don’t plan to get another until spring. Also, on the 6th, Erin’s dog, Bella was hit by a car & he called me, very upset (it was his birthday) thinking she was going to die or be paralyzed, but the vet called me yesterday & she’s going to be fine.

I’m thinking I want to look at door knobs on payday & change the one in my bedroom to something different. I don’t like that I don’t have a lock on it, but I could also just get a latch or something to lock it. I like the way the current knobs look, and think they match the door nicely, I’d just like a little more security for when I’m the only one here at night, since I lock the outside door any time we aren’t using it these days. I just think I’d feel safer knowing I’m locked in there at night.

I will be making an announcement about what I’ve been hinting at sometime next week, so those of you who may be concerned or just wondering what’s going on, your curiosity will be assuaged soon. Until then, we’ll just talk about everything else under the sun, like I have been for a couple of weeks.

It’s monsoon season here in the high desert, which means it clouds up & threatens to rain every afternoon. Sometimes it actually does, so you never really know if you’re safe to be out trying to soak up the sun or not. It’s like a game of Russian Roulette with the weather, honestly. Our city has recently started building a nice, new aquatic center here in town & the first part to open was the artificial lake, with a lovely swimming beach & we’ve been going out there pretty often lately. We spent several hours out there on Sunday & I’m still pretty burned from that trip, then we went back out for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon (I remembered to use sunblock!) and plan to go back tomorrow. Dawn & I are using it as a place to exercise, since it doesn’t hurt her too badly & on Sundays, we meet up with our friends & we all make an afternoon of it. It’s been a lot of fun so far & I’m so thankful that we have it & that it’s free.

We probably won’t get any motor home repairs done on our little RV this summer, we have some other things that really have to get done first & then we can focus on recreational stuff like that, I think. We are going camping again on the 13th, and I can hardly wait. It’s going to be a lot of fun & just our core group of friends, which is even better, because we have no kids to worry about & can just do whatever we like for the most part. There will beer, I can guarantee that! Anyway, I’m tired & wanting to go to bed, have a great night!

We made it to the gym today & yesterday, and yes, it was closed on Saturday, due to the state holiday. I was very disappointed when it was. I try very hard not to “eat my pain” anymore, since that’s how I ended up weighing over 300 pounds, so these days, I run. I’m not running on the trail, a track or the treadmill though, it’s just way to much impact for my messed up knees & ankles, so I run on the elliptical. Trust me, the workout is just as intense as the one day I did mange to run on the trail & I come out of the gym drenched in sweat, so I’m doing something right.

Things are strange around here, I’m not going to lie & say everything in my life is peachy-keen right now, so I’ll just leave it at that & let it speak for itself.

It’s the rainy season here in the high desert, which makes planning anything a little hard, because we never know if it’s actually going to rain or just threaten. We went swimming the other day & ended up getting cold when it got cloudy & came home. It was a lot of fun, though & we definitely plan to go back & do it again.

I haven’t had a decent nights’ sleep since Saturday & I think that one of the weekend nights were plagued with funny dreams about a friend of ours who kept trying to get me to sign up with a site that had online coupons. The funny thing is that he would never be the type to sign up for anything like that, and the dream seemed so real that I almost asked him about it the next night. Funny the games the mind plays when we leave it unattended, aren’t they?

I can’t rhyme anything with that, so I’ll just say that it’s Pioneer Day here in Utah, which commemorates the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, where the Latter-day Saints settled after being forced from Nauvoo, Illinois. That being said, I’m not Mormon, it’s not the state’s birthday & I don’t celebrate it. All it means to me is that there will be more fireworks tonight to scare my poor dog senseless & that Beth gets to ride the fire truck in the New Harmony parade. I hope people remember cameras because I don’t have the gas to go down & watch. I’m not sure I’d go down if I did have it, since I’m always unsure of how to act during these things. I mean, if Beth were riding the fire truck AND they were tossing certified diamonds off the side for the crowd to catch, I still might be hesitant to go, just because of my own awkwardness.

I had wanted to go to the gym today, but I’m thinking it’s probably closed, although we’ll drive over there when Troy wakes up & check, because I’d hate to miss a chance to work out if I have one. Other than that, Ryan’s coming over at some point to fix our swamp cooler, since it went out yesterday & was so hot in here when he came over last night that we had to retreat to the front yard. I did finally get it cooled down by turning it to vent, so sleeping wasn’t pure hell, although I was so tired when I finally made it to bed that I doubt that I’d have noticed.

I didn’t get enough sleep this morning, but I can always lie down on the couch & catch up a little if I need to later on. I need to get a hold of Dawn or Jason & see if they plan to be home tonight, so we can plan to game or figure something else out if they aren’t. I’m up for Rock Band almost any night of the week, honestly, so we’ll figure it out.

It’s time to feed the animals & turn the sprinklers on, so I guess I’d better finish this up.

We had a great time camping, we learned a lot about each & as is the case in every camping trip we take, some decisions were made. This isn’t one I can really talk about here, as I owe the story to the person it involves & until I find the words for that, I can’t really say. All in all, though, we had a fantastic time. I can’t wait until the next one. I wasn’t thrilled with myself in some of the pictures, they made me feel like I haven’t lost any weight at all, even though I know I did & the close ups made me realize that it’s time to get some prevera and do some skin tightening exercises or something, especially after losing weight.

I’m 100% back on my program as of this week. We’ve been either going walking/jogging on the trail or at the gym every other day & that makes me feel wonderful about myself. I went 2 1/2 miles today, which is a lot for me & I intend to do more on Saturday. No more slacking for me & I need to get back to the weight training, too, so we’ll add that on Saturday, as well.

I’m feeling conflicted & confused about some things in my life right now, but I imagine I’ll figure them out & find solutions, it’s just going to take some talking & some thinking, but I’ll come through it, I always do. It’s a pretty personal thing, of a nature that I don’t really discuss on here, so it’s all up to me. No worries, my marriage is intact & doing fine, this is really just me & stuff I need to deal with.

Things are things, Troy is back at work after his vacation & the house seems oddly empty, as it always does when he goes back to work. I miss his vacation goatee already, too. I couldn’t even look at him when he left for work yesterday. Rhi is having problems this week & I’ve been giving her a place to vent & talk things out, I hope I’m doing some good.

We’re off to our fun weekend in just a few minutes & I’m so happy that it’s finally here. I just want to spend time resting, relaxing & having fun with people I love to be around. A lot of us are having a tough time right now & hopefully this weekend will be just what the doctor ordered & we can all regroup & start brand new next week.

I’m going to spend time worrying about Rhi this weekend, since she’s depressed, but my dad is taking her fishing today sometime, so I’m hoping that will help lift the funk a little. I’m NOT going to worry about diets that work this weekend, I’m just going to focus on portion control & watching what I put in my mouth a little better than I have been lately.

Anyway, it’s about time to finish packing the car & head out, I hope you all have a great weekend, too.