Footprints on the Moon

No big party plans here… it’s almost 8pm, and I’m actually sitting here yawning, contemplating the merits of going to bed. If I DO end up going to bed, I’ll still set an alarm and get up to watch the ball drop. That’s probably kind of silly, but I don’t recall ever NOT watching it. Someday I’ll realize that it’s just midnight on just another day and get some proper sleep, but until then I’ll be dragging myself out of bed to watch Dick Clark and Times Square at midnight. Unless I stop being such an old lady and actually manage to stay up until midnight lol!

It’s been a long day… a long year actually. I know this year wasn’t all bad, but from where I sit right now it sure feels that way. It’s probably a bit unfair to this year, but part of me is really glad to see it go. I am glad to see today go… woke up feeling a bit sick this morning, developed a huge headache around lunchtime and said goodbye to my boss. It was his last day in his current position, and I was sad to see him go. Once he gets settled into his new position, he’ll probably be around some but not like before. It’s a change I’ve known about for months, and we’ve been preparing for, but it still felt kind of abrupt today. It’s not often that you find a boss that you actually like (at least in my, admittedly limited experience) so I’ll definitely miss him being around. And not just because I’m going to be lonely up in the lobby all by myself with noone to talk to!

So yeah, after all that, I think I will go to bed and get up in a few hours to ring in the new year, kiss the cat (since he’s the only male available), and go back to bed.

This is the very last Self Portrait Sunday for 2008, can you believe that? I took this picture yesterday before the final Christmas gathering of the year… my shirt says “Just how good do I have to be?” I shared my Christmas gifts in my last post, so apparently I managed to be good enough.

I can’t say I accomplished much this weekend, other than spending money that I shouldn’t. I did a little bit of shopping yesterday morning, then came home and showered. We had our small family Christmas for my mom’s side… the extended family was on Christmas Day, but just the small group of us got together yesterday for homemade Beef and Noodles and exchanging presents.

My big plan for today was to clean up the huge mess that my apartment became last week while I was so busy getting prepared for the holiday. I’ve had a pretty gigantic headache most of the day though, so I haven’t accomplished much besides sitting around and watching movies. I did manage to review my finances to see the damage, and I think now I’ll be looking for small business opportunities to bankroll it! Yikes… between Christmas and a bunch of random indiscriminate spending, my finances aren’t in very good shape. I’m still ahead of where I was last year, but not by a whole lot. I’m going to try and get together a real, concrete, tangible list of goals for my finances, so be looking for that in the next few days.

Well I guess I better think about going to find some dinner… I need to take some movies back to the redbox so I don’t have to pay for them for another night, and I’m not sure I’ve had an actual meal today. Hmmm…

It seems to be a requisite to list the Christmas presents you’ve gotten on your blog… since I’m such a good rule follower *cough* I thought I’d share what I got. I didn’t get an xbox 360, but I think I made out pretty good.

From Dad and Gloria I got the pajamas, slippers, and digital picture frame. Ryan and Ash-lee got me Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations.
Gammie gave everyone a restaurant gift card.
Mom gave me Wall-E and the money to pay for my Flickr Pro account! And from Grandma I got a sweatshirt, and a second copy of 101 Dalmations that I’ll exchange for a movie I don’t already have.
Sarah got me an ergonomic crochet hook set because I have a cyst in my wrist that acts up when I’ve been crocheting too long.

How did you do? Did you get everything you’d been hoping for? As for me, I’m just glad Christmas is over… I was SO not in the mood for it this year!

Yes, I realize I’m just a wee bit late with the Merry Christmas sentiment, but the festivities aren’t quite over for my family so I think it still counts! We’ve got one last Christmas gathering this afternoon, and then we can put this holiday in the books. I hope you had a wonderful time with your families… or not with your family, if that floats your boat! I won’t say alot about the holiday, I’ll just leave you with a selection of my favorite pictures so far. Mostly Killian, surprise, surprise.

Mom and Carleigh

I think he likes it…

and my personal favorite:

Ho ho ho. Or something like that. Man, two Self Portrait Sunday posts in a row… whoops? It’s not like I’ve not had anything to say. I’ve actually been composing blog posts in my head all week, but apparently never got so far as to actually write them down. Rest assured, you’re probably not missing much… some whining about the snow/ice storm we had on Thursday night, but that’s about it.

Yesterday I spent a freaking fortune at the grocery store, without actually doing much for grocery shopping. That’s talent! I got my vacation buy back for the year, so I decided to take a good chunk of that money and go stock up on the paper goods and such that usually manage to break my normal grocery budget: toilet paper, paper towels, razors, shaving cream, pads, dishsoap, trash bags… the list goes on. I also bought the ingredients for some of the holiday baking I’m intending to do.

Starting with the Scrabble mix that mom and I made yesterday. I spent most of the rest of the day, after dropping my fortune at Meijer, at mom’s house between washing laundry and working on the Scrabble. Now I have a ton of Scrabble that I’ll be foisting off on people for the next week, and a clean winter coat for the first time in *whispers* three years. Well, two and a half considering this year’s not over yet.

Today is watching some Christmas movies and wrapping presents, hence the Santa get-up. All the basketball trophies, and brand new cars are already wrapped, and now I’m taking a break right now to write this and get motivated to tackle the stuffed animals that I need to wrap. You know, the ones I don’t have appropriate sized boxes for, so I will be attempting to wrap on their own. Yeah, that will be fun. I know, I practiced earlier on the pillow I got for Killian. Note to self: next year, make sure you have appropriately sized boxes for all presents. Square and rectangular objects are MUCH easier to wrap than irregularly shaped SQUISHY ones!

I never made any official goals for 2008 when I started this journey back in February, so I don’t have a list of goals to review right now. Maybe some goals would have helped? I will say that I am not where I had hoped to be, and that’s mostly due to a few occasions where I completely abandoned the program and went shopping. A lot.

The only way to make progress is to be honest, so here’s the dirty truth: In February of this year, I had 14,255.08 worth of credit card debt (plus a car loan). If you add in my student loan debt, I had a total debt load of $33,479.07. As of today, my credit card/car debt stands at $12,252.92, with a total debt load of $30,424.19.

So in the last 11 months, I’ve paid off $3054.88 worth of debt. The year is not a complete loss, but I had hoped to be, HAVE been, and should be further along than that. If we’re being completely honest here, one of my credit cards went the wrong direction even though the total amount is down. I’m a little sad that the progress is basically accounted for in minimum payments… but forward is forward and tomorrow is a new day. With that in mind, I’ve made a few goals for 2009.

Financial Goals for 2009

1. Pay off my car loan. This goal should be accomplished within the first two months of the year. My car loan is currently 451.18 away from being paid off. Between what should amount to an “extra” paycheck and selling my Wii, I should be able to knock this out quickly. Even if I just make payments on schedule, my loan is slated to be paid off in July. So either way, in 2009 I will own my car free and clear!

2. Put money (back) in my Emergency Fund. I’m not looking to fully fund my EF this year, but I raided what money I had set aside to pay off the CitiCard earlier this year, and my emergency fund is still sitting with .01 in it. I don’t regret using the money the way I did, but it is a little uncomfortable to have that paid off credit card be my only “emergency fund.” Basically I want to put at least $500 back into my savings account at ING. I know it’s a small amount, but I’m just looking to put a little distance between me and Murphy while I focus on other goals.

3. Set aside money to finance Christmas next year in cash. I had planned to use cash this year, but since I hadn’t set it aside in advance, it didn’t quite work. I would have had to wait until 6 days before Christmas to do the bulk of my shopping since that’s when the paycheck with the majority of my available money came in. When I’ve had time to sit down and rework my budget, I’ll try and come up with a dollar amount that I’m shooting for, and a per paycheck/per month amount to put into a special savings account.

4. Pay off my WaMu credit card. This is my smallest credit card, which is part of why it’s the one I’m going to focus on, but it’s also the one with the highest interest rate. Between the other goals I’ve already listed, and just keeping up with the rest of the minimum payments in my life, paying this one off ENTIRELY may be a bit of a stretch, but I’m sure going to try!

So there you have my four financial goals for the coming year… I didn’t really expect to be ready to discuss the difference between term life insurance and, well, all the other types of life insurance available, but I did expect to be a whole lot further along. I can’t change the past though, so I’ll just have to move forward from where I’m at. And I can be grateful that I’m three thousand dollars closer to freedom than I was a year ago… it’s better than nothing, and for the most part, I’ve stopped digging.

I should be getting a small raise in a week or so, and when I find out what a “normal” paycheck looks like, I’ll be sitting down to rework the budget. It’s not a lot of money, but hopefully it will be enough to help me move these goals along. I’ll keep you posted!

Another Sunday, another picture. How was your weekend? I guess I should say, how was your week since I’ve only had one post between today and last week’s Self Portrait Sunday. Whoops. What can I say? When I don’t feel like I can write about what I want to, I don’t feel like writing about Orovo detox either. There really wasn’t much to write about last week though… I suppose I could have told you about decorating the lobby at work for Christmas. I’m not decorating at home this year, so that’s the extent of my Christmas spirit. Ho ho ho.

Friday was a good day… because I had a day of vacation! Woohoo! Can’t beat a day off work. Originally I had asked for the day off because I was supposed to be going to Chicago with my mom on Saturday and I didn’t want to feel like I’d spent my whole weekend just go go going. Plans changed, and the Chicago trip was postponed, but I kept the vacation day. Don’t have much to account for the day, but that’s just the way I like a day off. Relaxing… with a bit of cleaning, and running through my Tivo.

Saturday was a trip to the grocery store for a couple items that were on sale, and some pina colada mix. Sarah came over, we grabbed dinner and spent the rest of the night with our pina colada shakes– pina colada mix, coconut rum, and vanilla ice cream– and watching movies. I was supposed to go to my cousin Lilyana’s 1st birthday party, but I’ve been really coughing and didn’t want to risk sharing my germs with all the babies so I stayed home instead. I’ll have to give her her birthday present on Christmas, I suppose.

Today was my actual grocery shopping, a little bit of cooking, and some catching up online. I’ve been going through my pictures on Flickr, and getting some posts in draft for Jenn Cooks. Don’t miss the Chocolate Mint Pie that I posted today. My uniforms are in the dryer now, and I’m watching The Santa Claus. When both of those are done, I’ll probably be thinking about bed. Funny how my weekend was an extra day longer, but still feels far too short!

I still don’t feel comfortable sharing what’s taking up most of my headspace, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to share with you why I get scared when I come home, or open my apartment door, and find a bag out there. This means my uncle has been there, and it’s usually scary. See, he’s one of the maintenance guys at the apartment complex where I live so he’s in apartments going through the items the owners have left behind and he’s not above dumpster diving. Now, maybe it’s just me, but usually people leave things behind or throw them away FOR A REASON.

Let me share with you the contents of a scary bag that arrived sometime this weekend (don’t remember exactly when).

There was this shirt, which I’m sure was cute. I didn’t check the size, but I’m pretty sure it would have been too small for me had it been in good shape. I hope you can see how full of holes this shirt is. I was holding it by two fingertips, and decided to lay it out on the floor to take a picture and blog about it. That’s when I noticed it. Do you see it?? Here, let me help you…

Is that… blood?!?

Oh my god, gag. But there was also a ziploc baggie with an item in it, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. So against my better judgement, I opened the baggie and I kid you not, the stench coming out of it about knocked me down. (It was a hat and scarf, by the way…) Oh man! I immediately sealed that baby back up and stuck it back in the hallway. Then I scrubbed my hands with scalding water and lit a candle to try and remove the smell.

So yes, I get scared when I come home to find bags hanging from my door. But I think this is a warranted, and clearly, learned reaction.

I’m trying to figure out where this weekend has gone. I certainly can’t say that it has gone anywhere productive… Well, I’m cooking 2 different soups in the crockpot today, but that’s about the extent of it.

Friday was full of stress and drama. It’s all been settled (at least temporarily) satisfactorily, but the whole situation is far from settled. I know that’s all very vague, but it’s not something I feel comfortable putting out there on my blog at this point in time. It’s taken up a huge amount of my mental resources this weekend, hence why I feel like I’ve gotten absolutely nothing done.

I did make it to lunch with my friend Erica yesterday, and spent some money at Walmart. The rest of the weekend has been catching up with the Tivo, cooking and just generally being lazy. I haven’t even worked on the sewing project I mentioned the other day. I WANT to, but I just can’t bring myself to sit at the card table and let my butt go numb. I should also be doing some cleaning, but it’s not like the mess won’t still be here for me to handle tomorrow, right? Right?

I’m about out of new items recorded on my Tivo, so I think I’m going to go pick out a movie to watch and finally go through my paper from this morning. Oh, my shirt says “I’ve been naughty” in case you were wondering. Got it for $5 at Old Navy’s Big Weekend sale after Thanksgiving.

A sneaky peek at what’s had me behind the sewing machine for the last 5 days or so (I’m taking a break tonight). Go ahead and pretend like those blocks all line up as perfectly as I wish they would.

So as the title promised, things I’ve discovered at my sewing machine this week:

– I may be better at sewing straight lines (most of the time), but I apparently haven’t mastered the skill of consistent seam allowances.
– There is not enough lighting in my living room for crafting after the sun goes down. I have another lamp that I should be able to turn on, but for some reason it trips the breaker every time I try to plug it in.
– Sitting on a folding chair from my card table set for long enough to do some sewing really makes my butt hurt.
– It’s funny to wait until the cats are sitting on the card table getting comfy, and then start sewing again. The whole table shakes and they get scared. HAHA!
– I’m finding sewing a bit harder than I thought I would. Or maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist. Or maybe I’m just not giving myself enough time to learn.
– I have no idea how to proceed with this project once I get done sewing my rows of squares together.