Author Archives: Manda

These dreary days — which have been going on for a week now — are really getting to me. It’s making me even more tired then I normally am (which is pretty bad because my iron deficiency anemia keeps me extremely tired and live on caffeine just to function). And I just want to go outside and feel the sun on my face without having a cold breezy or raindrops hit my face.

Besides complaining about the weather — which I have been doing a lot of lately — I have done nothing but work. Be it work from my actual job that I am paid for or housework, that is all I seem to do anymore. Mike and I went to his company picnic Sunday and had a great time. His coworkers/friends are pretty awesome and I like hanging out with them.

So how is everyone’s Spring going so far? Raven is almost done with her junior year of high  school. Her last day is the 28^th of May (I think) and then she is off for the summer. I am looking forward to her summer break. Means I don’t have to get up at 5:40 every weekday morning.

There are many, many reasons why I love my cats. From their adorableness to their purrs, I love ‘em more than you could imagine. In fact, there are only a handful of people that I would put above my two cats. In this post, I’m going to take about just one of the reasons why I love my furry little babies.

Their ‘I’m going to do whatever I want to you’ attitude. No matter what the time of day or night, if the need strikes them to run across your face, they will do it. And even though it can be a bit annoying at times, I wouldn’t change this part of their cat personality at all.

For example, it is a common occurrence for Jedi to decide that I have slept long enough and he needs to wake me up by gently patting my face with his soft kitty paw. If I ignore his gentle pats, he seems to get a bit impatient and decides that the next best course of action is to pat my face not-so-gently with his claws. This usually does the trick. Other tactics in his arsenal include gently biting my nose or licking my eyelid until I am up and out of bed.

Nefarian, on the other hand, gets the urge to attack my feet at 2am because I made the mistake of wiggling my toes while I was sleeping. He also finds it necessary to run across us while we are sleeping because it would be too much trouble to walk around the bed when he can simply take a shortcut across our sleeping bodies.

While these actions can get frustrating, especially when all you want to do is get one sleep-through-the-night night, I do love it. I love how they “own” me. How they use me as a jungle gym. How that, no matter what I am doing, they can come sit on my lap and steal my attention.

I love my cats.

I have so many things I need/want to do and I just cannot seem to fit them all in during the day. I would cut back on sleep but I am one of these people that cannot function properly on a mere 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Even with 8 hours of sleep and the proper dosage of iron pills as prescribed by my doctor, I am still tired. That is mainly due to the almost non-existent iron in my body (I have severe iron- deficiency anemia and my body cannot hold onto iron which means I have no iron reserve and am always tired). Anyway, I need a few extra hours during the day to get everything done. I really envy those who can go! go! go! with only a few hours of sleep. Anyway, it’s almost 1:30am and I should have went to bed a few hours ago. The cats have been reminding me in a not-so-subtle way that they too are ready to hit the hay. Goodnight all!

I’m not going to lie, I hate exercising. I like dancing, walking and the like but when it is the sole purpose of exercising, I don’t like it one little bit. I hate it when I start, despise it in the middle and loath it at the end only thankful for finally being done with it.

But after I have completed the workout, I feel good. I feel proud of myself for finishing the entire hour and thank the good Lord I am done with it for the day. And that feeling continues on through the rest of the day. In addition, my entire body feels better and even with the aches and pains that come with exercising aging bones (I’m going to be 32 this year! OMG) it’s a good pain if that makes any sense.

Am I looking forward to the hour workout tomorrow? Hell no! Would I rather be able to lose weight by sitting on my ass, watching movies and eating chocolate? Hell yes! Is that going to happen? Unfortunately no so that means I have to keep exercising in order to get rid of the 10 pounds I have gained these past few months plus an additional 10 to 20 pounds to get to my goal weight of 135 to 140 pounds.

January

• Went to Ohio for a late Christmas dinner with my Dad, stepmom and stepbrothers.
• My Nan (grandma) passed away on the 17th. I miss that old, perverted woman so much and there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about her.
• My grandpa who lives in Ohio passed away on the 22nd.

February

• Bought my husband a WoW Alliance ring for Valentine’s Day.
• Had the best Valentine’s Day I had had in about 4 years.

March

• Celebrated Mike’s 32nd birthday.
• Battled a major cold for several weeks.
• Started a vegetable garden.
• Became addicted to the mind numbing reality show The Jersey Shore.

April

• Celebrated my 31st birthday.
• Started the Couch-to-5K.
• Celebrated Raven’s 14th birthday.
• Bought my first pair of running shoes.
• My uncle passed away.
• Celebrated my Mom’s 53rd birthday.

May

• Fell in love with the TV show Twin Peaks.
• Found the house we wanted.
• Watched The Hangover 2 twice in the movie theaters.
• Celebrated Nan’s birthday with cake. This was the first birthday she celebrated in heaven.

June

• Cut down on how much pop I drunk, replacing it with water.
• Seemed like we would not get the house.
• Had a mini breakdown due to stress.
• Found 2 kittens outside and started taking care of them.

July

• We got the house!
• Closed on the house on the 14^th.
• My cousin Daniel towed my car for me to the family mechanic so the break lines could be fixed.
• Began working on the house.
• The girl kitten we found outside in June came up missing. We don’t know what happened to her.
• Photographed my stepbrother’s wedding.

August

• Spent half the month working on the house.
• Began getting the new kitten (who we named Nefarian)use to begin indoors and around Jedi and London.
• Moved into our home on the 18^th.
• Raven started high school.

September

• Still getting settled into our home.
• Photographed my stepbrother’s reception.

October

• Raven went to her first high school dance.
• Celebrated Halloween.

November

• Had a movie night at my house we my Mom.
• A major client of mine reduced their work load and our finances took a BIG hit.
• Started having bad headaches on the left side of my head that continue to this day,
• Went to my Sister-in-law’s baby shower.
• My Dad told me he is going to try to move back to WV!
• Celebrated Thanksgiving.

December

• Me and Mike celebrated our 10^th wedding anniversary.
• Kept remarking about how it does not feel like Christmas.
• Celebrated Christmas.
• Took maternity photos for my sister-in-law.

Over the past few months, I have let myself gain 10 pounds. I am not proud of it and am actually pretty damn disgusted with myself. If I don’t do something about it now, I will end up gaining the remaining 50 pounds back and I defiantly do not want to do that. So, I am back on the wagon and am determined to lose the 10 pounds I gained. If I get to my goal than I am rewarding myself with this Firefly shirt (which is one of my all time favorite tv shows) that I have been wanting for awhile now. Once I lose the 10 pounds than I will try to lose an additional 10 pounds and give myself another reward. I am hoping I can get the 20 pounds lost before June because my all time favorite actor the oh so awesome Bruce Campbell is going to be at the Philadelphia Comic Con and since that’s only a few hours away from me I definitely want to go and maybe have the chance of meeting him and making a complete fool out of myself. But I don’t want to waddle in there with an extra 20 pounds on me. So wish me luck!

Monday, I took maternity pictures for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law at the VA park a few towns over. We where originally going to take the pictures indoors at a friend of my sister-in-law’s house but at the last minute it was changed to the park. I was only prepared for an indoor photo shoot so I learned my lesson as far as they saying “always be prepared” goes. Anyway, I don’t know about them, but I had fun. They are constantly having their photos taken on a regular basis (my brother-in-law is a member of the semi-famous/popular Christian band DecembeRadio) and they have a close friend who is a professional photographer. And I am pretty sure the reason why they asked me to take the photos had something to do with a certain family member’s meddling (but that could just be my own personal insecurities since I don’t think they really wanted me to take the pictures and would have preferred a better photographer) but anywho, here are a few of my favorite shots:

Christmas Eve and Christmas day was filled with food, fun and family. On Christmas Eve, we stopped and seen Mike’s mom before stopping at my Mom’s house to exchange gifts and pick her up. The four of us (me, Mike, Raven and Mom) headed down the road down to my Aunt Lois’s house to stuff our faces with pizza, sandwiches (egg salad, chicken salad and ham salad), cheese sticks, crackers, cheese, chips, dip and the like. We stayed until about 5pm and then we dropped Mom off at her house and headed down to Mike’s Dad and Grandpa’s for the rest of the night. Once we got home, all three of us were beat and ready for bed. Even though I took my camera with me, I didn’t take a single picture while we were at family’s. I just wasn’t in the mood to snap some pictures and got sidetracked bullshitting with our family.

We stayed home for Christmas day since we spent the previous two days running around. Raven opened her gifts (manga, various anime DVDs, anatomy book and Japanese demystified book along with little odds and ends), I opened mine (Bored to Death Season 2 DVD) and Mike opened his. Our fuzzy babies also opened theirs (Jedi and Nefarian got a crinkle tunnel and treats while London got a stuffed hedgehog and chewy bones). Raven didn’t brush her hair before opening her Christmas presents so I won’t be posting any of the pictures I took of her opening her gifts. But here are some other pictures.

Nefarian loves playing in bags.

Jedi does not like having a bow on his head.

Nefarian playing in his and Jedi’s crinkle tunnel/cave that they got for Christmas.

Tonight, a truck pulling an open trailer full of people drove up and down the road blasting Christmas music, honking their horn and yelling Merry Christmas. And it was awesome! With the temperatures reaching 60 degrees today and nothing but gloomy and rainy, these people (we think it may be the people from the church at the end of the road but we’re not for sure) made it seem a little bit more like Christmas. So I want to thank those people (though I highly doubt they will read this) for adding some much needed Christmas cheer into what has been a gloomy and rainy day.

So, Christmas is now less than seven days away and I am not even close to being ready. This year, it just seems that the holidays snuck up on me so very quickly. I still have a lot of presents to buy (and wrap. I haven’t even wrapped the gifts I all ready bough yet) and a ton of baking to do! I didn’t even get all my Christmas decorations put up this year! I think the whole buying/moving/getting settled into a new house is what has thrown me off. At least that is what I am going to blame it on. We have lived here since August 18th and I still have stuff in boxes I need to unpack!

Anyway, this week is going to be a busy one. I am planning to finish up my Christmas shopping Tuesday evening with a trip to the mall and Walmart. Raven’s last day of school is the 21st and then she is off until January 3rd.

Well, it’s all ready after 11:30pm and I still have a few things I need to get done before bed. Nighty Nighty.