About Me

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I have two kids - a girl and a boy - and live in north-central Minnesota, land of snow and ice. Well, for 9 months of the year, that is. I work full-time for a local government, and on my "free time" I enjoy cooking, baking, hanging out with my kiddos, and RELAXING.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

talk about your health reform

Remember my health scare a couple weeks ago? The one I wrote about here? The breast lump that turned out to be nothing?

Well, that nothing cost me over $300. After health insurance. Not counting another $200 for my second ultrasound in six months.

Seriously considering skipping that bad boy.

You don't even want to know how expensive that first ultrasound was. But I'll tell you anyway.

$622.20

That's right. Six hundred twenty-two dollars and twenty cents. For thirty minutes in a hospital breast center. Those people are banking.

A smart person would have at least attempted to check around on prices, but when you're scared you might have breast cancer money isn't at the top of your priority list.

But really, how do you check prices for an ultrasound? Can you seriously call up a hospital and say, "Yo, how much for that ultrasound over there?"

Please advise.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

p90x

Darren and I started p90x a week ago.

I already want to kill myself. We work out over an hour a day, six days a week, and have to follow this crazy eating plan. Of which chocolate is not a main food group.

It's not going well.

Darren's parents have done it a couple times and they really like it. Darren loves it, but I don't think it's for me. I haven't lost a single pound and I've done more push-ups in the past week than the rest of my life combined.

I really don't do well with restrictive eating plans and daily workouts. That's not my style. I've tried it before and it doesn't work for me. Like yesterday, after a week of no sweets, all I wanted was to pound a bag of M&Ms. So I did. Well, half a bag (and I didn't tell Darren). If they would have been dark chocolate it probably would have been the whole bag. And this is what I try to tell Darren. I need to have something sweet during the week otherwise I just freak out on weekends and eat bags of candy. He doesn't get it.

And I do complain about wanting to lose a couple pounds, so I can see why he really wants me to do this with him. And also why he always tells me to stop eating chocolate, but it is getting freaking ANNOYING as all get out. I'm about ready to drop a couple choice words at him the next time I say I want some chocolate and he says, "You don't need any." Someone's gonna take a punch in the face pretty soon.

I know how to lose weight. I do. I've done it my way, and it worked. And yes, I realize I haven't lost any weight for a while, but I haven't been trying my best. And my best includes a daily dose of chocolate. Yes, it takes longer, but that's what works for me. I tried to tell Darren that p90x isn't a lifestyle change, it's a restrictive diet and exercise program. It's not realistic, and it's not sustainable. I can't work out for an hour and a half every day for the rest of my life. Nor can I be limited to two pieces of bread per day with no other carbs. It's just not realistic, and it's not going to stick.

So here's what I've decided about p90x: I'm going to give it my best shot on the workouts and eating plan, but if I eat a piece of cake or skip an hour and a half of yoga, I'm not gonna sweat it. Life happens. And when Darren starts round two, you can sure as shootin' count me out.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

my favorite movies


I LOVE You've Got Mail. You already know how much I love Tom Hanks, but I also really like Meg Ryan. So what could be better than this movie?

I may have already glossed over my love of this movie here, but that just doesn't do it justice.

Two strangers, writing emails to each other in a friendly camaraderie while loathing each other in their personal life. It may just be that I love the pretense, because I really start to get into the movie once Tom Hanks realizes exactly who Meg Ryan is. So romantic.

Also worth a view is the original movie, entitled (fittingly enough) The Shop Around the Corner. It's an old B&W where the women wear dresses and the men carry handkerchiefs. I'm not sure I even have my old copy, but I could probably find another one on ebay or Amazon. May need to look into that; it's been years since I've seen that movie.

If you haven't seen either, they're definitely worth checking in to!

Friday, April 16, 2010

cowgirl shoes debute

I wore my cowgirl shoes to work today. We have casual Fridays so that means I can wear jeans. It's way awesome. Anyway, I wore my cowgirl shoes. And my flip-flops. You see, I have to walk about 15 minutes from the parking ramp to the building I'm working in right now. And there was no way I was about to hike that far in those shoes. Especially the first time I've ever worn them.

That's a mistake I've made before.

Anyway, so I wore my flip-flops until I got to the office and then switched out. My cowgirl shoes rocked. They are surprisingly comfortable, although I can tell I'm going to have to break my feet into regular heels again after a winter of wearing my dressy boots with socks.

Also, this morning while riding the elevator in the parking ramp I was thinking about my flip-flops. Do you remember when people used to call them "thongs?" Or maybe that was just my weird family. But yeah, we totally called them thongs until...you know...actual thongs started getting more popular.

And sometimes I still look at my flip-flops and laugh.

Monday, April 12, 2010

not a fun morning

My birth control made me sick this morning.

I've been on this stuff for forever and a day and then all of a sudden the past couple months it's been making me feel nauseous some mornings. What the heck is up with that?

At least I know I don't have some random disease. I was telling my friend about how I was feeling kind of sick in the mornings and had no idea why, and she oh-so-wisely suggested it may be my birth control. (Thanks, Krista!) I had been getting a little worried about it, but crisis averted.

However, not cool to be puking from the birth control pills. Especially after drinking a big glass of juice. Pink juice.

Fortunately it didn't keep me from going to work. I want that comp time, and I want it bad. (If anyone was worried about me going to work after I threw up, I was 99.99% sure it was only from the pill and that I did not have any sort of weird sickness. So no harm done, mmkay?)

So I know I should go see my gynecologist and tell her to write me a new prescription, but I don't have time. Nor do I want to pay my co-pay. So probably I'll just deal with it and whine and moan to ya'll.

Good plan.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

my work attitude

Sometimes my work attitude leaves something to be desired.

Especially on Mondays.

Mondays are rough, and even more so because I'm on overtime right now. I'm working ten hours days Monday through Thursday and eight hours on Friday. My weekends literally fly by. Actually, so does the rest of the week.

Except the hours I spend at work. You know how that goes.

Every Monday at 5:15 am I want to quit my job. But by 9:30 I'm thinking, "hey, this isn't so bad." And usually by some point during the day I'm starting to enjoy it. My love of my job slowly improves over the week until quitting time on Thursday/Friday when it's at an all-time high.

But then by Sunday night I want to quit again.

So tell me, how do you beat the Monday blues?

Friday, April 9, 2010

cleaning

So I was going to clean the house last night.

Was.

You know how it goes, you get home from work and the very last thing you feel like doing is cleaning.

As one of my co-workers would say, "I hear ya cluckin'."

Growing up I had this dream that my house would always be spotless and shiny and smell like baking cookies. Or sometimes cake.

Yeah. Right.

But the funny part? I still think my house will be clean and spotless after I have children--that there won't be any toys or dirty clothes all over the floor.

And I know I'm crazy to believe it, but I do.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

March budget

So...just a little late.

We did pretty well in March. Our goal, if you remember, is to save 50% of our income each month. We saved 44%, which really isn't that close, but considering it's our first real month (last month had a huge tuition reimbursement and a tax refund) I thought we did okay. And now we know which areas we need to cut down on more.

I'll let you know how April goes.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

what a week!

I had an ultrasound today.

Nope, not preggers.

I had an ultrasound on my breast.

Let me explain.

Monday night I noticed this weird lump that I had never noticed before. A major freak-out ensued. Tuesday morning I called the doctor one and a half minutes after the clinic opened. Fortunately I was able to get in later that day. I spent the whole morning at work trying not to have a mental breakdown. I was unsuccessful, unfortunately.

I saw a doctor I didn't know since I didn't want to wait around for my usual doctor lady to be available. This other woman was really nice, though. She did the exam and found another lump. Lovely. But she reassured me and said, "It's probably nothing" right before she said, "We'll get you set up for an ultrasound." Apparently "nothing" doesn't actually mean "nothing." But hey, I'm not complaining; it's totally better to be safe than sorry.

Well, apparently mammograms won't work on my breasts--weird, right? Something about them being too "fibrous" which I take to mean "lumpy." (Maybe that's too much information...) In any case, I had to have an ultrasound today at the hospital. I was able to go during work so I only missed an hour, which was nice. Less time to make up.

So the ultrasound lady globs me up with that goo and takes that little handheld thing and just goes at it. She looks at the first one for a while and then moves on to the second. And she looks at it. And she looks at it. And she moves the hand thing around. Then she moves the lump around. Then she looks at it some more. And then I start to get worried. Eventually she says she's going to get the radiologist to talk over the results with me. I wait about five minutes and the radiologist comes in and feels the lump and looks at the ultrasound. Which, by the way, how the heck can they see anything on that?? All I saw was weird blurbs and lots of lines. But they were all analyzing every little thing. Which is good. That's their job, right?

So anyway, she said it's benign and then called it some weird name which I think was "fibroadenoma." But I can't be sure on that. She also told me to come back for another ultrasound in six months just to make sure "it's not doing anything funky."

Something to look forward to.

Monday, April 5, 2010

movie review


We saw How to Train Your Dragon over the weekend. I'm a pretty big fan of animated movies, and this one didn't let me down.

It was excellent. I highly recommend it.

Rating: A+