I'm pretty beat, I've still got some things to do around the house and I just want to go to bed, but for some reason, I'm writing down random thoughts for no good reason at all.  I don't really have anything to say.  At least not anything worthwhile, which is just like every other blog post I've written in the past.

There's not many things more uplifting and good for the old self esteem than flirting with a boy you think is hot who thinks just the same about you.  Seriously.  My self esteem can always use that.  Not that it's terrible, but still.  I've come to a weird realization recently.  My self esteem isn't nearly as bad as it once was.  I find myself looking in the mirror (a lot, actually) and liking the person I see reflecting back.  That's never really happened before.  I don't know what's changed, but more often than not I see someone handsome in the mirror.  Not always.  I've got days when I need to bag my face cuz it's not pretty, but more and more I see someone I actually like.  And then hearing nice things from someone under no obligation whatsoever only helps.

My hand is doing so much better already.  After two days on the steroid, the hand looks almost completely normal again.  I tried to put my wedding band back on this morning, but it was still just a little bit too tight.  I'll try it again tomorrow and see how that does.  The hand itself is still a little stiff and still a little red, but it looks nothing like it did on Sunday.  I was fearful that it was going to take longer than expected to get back to it's normal state because of how swollen it was.  Luckily, it's nearly it's old self again.

I like Strawberry flavored Crystal Light.  For real.

See.  I really don't have anything to say.  I'm dull.  I'm mundane.  But I like it.

A few weeks ago, I went to a pool party at a friend's house.  Before the end of the party, I noticed my ring finger was starting to swell up.  Apparently I was bitten by something that my body just didn't like.  A week on a steroid and I was back to normal.  Yesterday, I went swimming there again and sure enough, before I was ready to head home, my left hand started puffing up again.  Instead of just my ring finger, this time it was my pointer and middle fingers and a good portion of my hand.  When I woke up this morning, my entire hand was a big puff ball.  I got home too late last night to stop at the Urgent Care near the house, so I went first thing this morning.  I got another prescription of the steroid and just popped my first pill.  Last time my finger shrunk back down pretty quickly.  It took all week for it to be 100% back to normal (it took that long before my wedding ring fit again).  I'm afraid it's going to take just a little longer this time as my hand is way more swollen than the last time.  In addition to my hand, when I was showering this morning, I noticed the top of my head had a bit of a bump on it.  It looks like I got bitten or stung there, too.  I have no idea what it is that I'm allergic to, but I'm not too happy about it.  This is putting a damper on my fun time this summer.  Meh.

This is my puffed up left hand

This is my normal sized  right hand

I've started making some plans for the fall.  A few weeks ago a friend called and asked if I wanted to go see Morrissey.  I saw that he was coming to town (Morrissey in Albany?  Seriously?) and thought it might be fun to go see, but didn't think anything more about it until I got the call.  I'm actually kind of excited by the thought.  Nothing like a night of maudlin teenage suicide music!  The weekend before Morrissey is here, I'm going to be in NYC for the New York Comic Con.  I just bought my tickets tonight.  I can't wait to get my geek on!

So another week has gone by.  Where is all my time going?

Every day I can think of something I want to write about here, but when I actually do find the time, it all flies out of my head.  What a way to maintain a blog, huh?

I'm bummed I'm home in New York while the San Diego Comic Com was going on this weekend.  I would have loved to have been there.  All it's doing is getting me excited for the New York Comic Con come this October.  I need to start hammering out my plans for it.  I love little more than getting my geek on.

The week that is just ending now was a pretty stressful one for me.  I started it out on the wrong foot and it just went downhill quickly.  Last Sunday was fantastic, and I did everything I wanted to do except nap.  And I ended up staying up too late reading.  So I ended the day exhausted and started the next day even more tired.  And it was a domino effect all week.  And the more tired I get, the crankier I get.  And the crankier I get, the more the little things really bother me.  Mid-week, I lost my shit over something small and insignificant that I really have no control over.  It made me feel like shit. It was kind of a wake up call about my currently living situation and got me to rethink some things.  I've been in a much better mood since.

The stress I've been feeling has had one positive end result, though.  I've been channeling my irritation and rage into the gym.  I've been wearing myself out, but I've had some pretty fantastic results.  For the first time this year, I've seen the 180s on the scale again.  I think it was November when that last happened.  The last three days I've been below 190.  That's huge considering I've spent all of this year hovering around the 200 lb mark.  Tomorrow I fear will see a decent jump in my weigh in.  I've been eating like a 12 year old left alone in a bakery all weekend.  And I'm drinking a big ass chocolate beer.

Ken and I are helping out some friends next weekend looking after their cats.  I'm really looking forward to housesitting for them.  I won't have any of the regular distractions of home around me and I need a little of that right about now.  This is contingent of Ken's nephew getting back to town by them.  He went to New Hampshire for the weekend, but I have a feeling he's going to be away for a while.  If he doesn't come back in time, I'll split my time between my house and their house, which won't be as much fun, but it's still better than nothing.

I had what might be the best burrito I've ever had last night.  We were in Kingston and went to a place called The Armadillo.  It's a small little place and it was amazing.  Just amazing.  Next time I'm down at my Dad's house, I need to go.

Today was nearly the perfect kind of day.  The type I've been longing for for a very long time.  It was one of the laziest days I've had in longer than I can remember.

I just don't know how to turn off.  I always have great plans to take a day off and do nothing.  Just lounge around, read and not much else.  I always seem to find something to keep me from doing the nothing that I want to do.  Today was different.  Granted, I can't say that I was 100 percent successful, but it was close enough.  

I got up really, really, really early for some dumb reason.  I knew I wanted to hit the gym pretty early, but it was ridiculous that I got up before six this morning.  The gym doesn't even open until seven on Sunday.  Anyway, I got up, poked around online for a little bit before I motivated to the gym.  I got home in plenty of time before Ken had to leave for his business trip.  But he was gone by 10 am and I was on my own.  A load of laundry in the washer, a little bit of organizing the pantry (which has gotten way out of control) and then the day was mine.  I sat outside in the sun for a little bit reading, which made me very happy, but also made me realize I was very hungry.  I decided I needed pizza.  I had an awesome fucking weigh in this morning and I deserved it.  So I headed out, ate, came home and plopped myself back in my chair in the sun.  This time, I grabbed a beer to go with my book.  That lead to a little nap, which lead to another beer, which lead to more reading, which lead to more sunning.  I'm getting pretty tan.  

I'm taking a little computer break right now to eat my ice cream and then I'm heading back upstairs shortly to read some more and then pass out for the night.  What's going to make that extra nice is that I changed the sheets today.  New sheet night is always the best night of the week.

I haven't been able to have one of these days in a long time.  With Ken's nephew living here, he's ALWAYS here.  He hasn't worked in months, so even when I have a day off from work, the house is never empty.  It makes it hard for me to truly relax like I want to.  But today was different as I completely tuned out the rest of the world and had great success with it.

Back to the real world tomorrow, though...  I have a feeling tomorrow isn't going to be fun.  Prove me wrong, universe.  I dare ya!

I'm pretty convinced I'm not allowed to sleep.  Ever.  This week has been kind of crazy for sleep.  The other night, Ken's nephew woke me up about a half an hour after I fell asleep for the night.  While that kind of sucked, what sucked more was the fact that thirty minutes is about all you need to keep you up the rest of the night.  Tuesday was hard because I was working on two plus hours of sleep.

I had Friday off for the second round of my root canal work.  I was very excited because I would be able to sleep in a couple extra hours, always a good thing.  Until Ken woke me up to ask me what time I needed to wake up.  At 6:15.  Forty-five lousy minutes after I normally get up.  And that was it.  I was awake.

After the dentist, I ran errands, came home, read for a bit, headed out to the gym, came home and sat in the back yard.  When I do this, I tend to fall asleep.  And EVERY SINGLE TIME I've done that this summer, Peter, the nephew, wakes me up.  And Friday was no different.  I must have been asleep fifteen minutes before he comes out and wakes me up.  Seriously.  I'm not allowed to sleep.

This morning I planned on staying unconscious until noon.  I've been dragging.  Dragging.  No one lets me sleep.  At 6 o'clock, Ollie decided he was hungry and started licking my face.  Awake again.  I can't catch a break.  So I got up and started my day.  I hit the gym again, I came home and showered.  Ken suggested getting breakfast, so we did that.  Ran a couple errands.  Then I decided I needed to go grocery shopping.  Half way to the supermarket, this huge wave of exhaustion hit me.  HUGE.  I don't know the reasoning behind half the stuff I bought today other than I just was wandering around the market like a zombie.  I got home and put the groceries away, called Ollie and ran up and took the first decent nap I've had in probably six months.  I think I might still be asleep now except in the position I was sleeping, my hands kept falling asleep and that would wake me up.  But I was too tired to change positions.  Plus, Ollie was sound asleep on top of me and that made me happy.

Today didn't really pan out the way I had hoped it would.  My big plans for today were to get up early (fail), go to the gym (success), go grocery shopping (success) and then spend the rest of the day lounging out back in the sun (fail.)  Instead, I slept in later than I had planned, but I'm not complaining about that.  I never let myself get enough sleep, so this was okay.  Sleeping in meant I got a later start for the gym, which I desperately needed today.  I spent the day at my friends' house at their pool party and I over indulged (like I always do.)  I got home, showered and headed out to the supermarket.  When I got home, I decided that rather than put things off like I'm apt to do, I should go take care of something.  Yesterday, at the aforementioned pool party, I noticed my wedding ring was feeling really tight.  My finger started swelling up a little.  I pulled the ring off thinking that might help, but it didn't.  The finger continued to blow up.  When I got home last night, I took a Benadryl, thinking maybe I got a bug bite.  This morning the finger was no better.  After shopping, I decided to take a quick trip over to the Urgent Care to have it looked at.  That was mistake number one.  I walked in, said I'd like to see a doctor about my finger.  The wench at the reception desk asked what I did to it.  I told her I didn't know.  It's all swollen and I'd like to see a doctor to see what's going on.  She then spent the next five minutes discouraging me from seeing a doctor.  She did everything but say "leave."  She said if I broke my finger, I'm going to need an x-ray and they don't do those there.  She said I should go up to the Latham Urgent Care because they do x-rays.  I was really fucking annoyed, to say the least, that this woman gave me the runaround like that.  I turned around and walked out and headed up to the other location.  Long story short, he couldn't tell if it was an infection causing my issue or an allergic reaction.  He wrote me a prescription for something to fight both and sent me on my way. 

While I was at the Urgent Care, I got a text from Ken asking where my car was.  He had been at work and I texted him that I was going there.  On his way home, he stopped but didn't see my car.  That's when I told him I'd basically been turned away.  He lost his mind and went in and went off on them.  Both the receptionist and the nurse (who I hadn't seen) came up with some cock & ball story about why I wasn't treated.  Whatever.

By the time I got home from seeing the doctor and then the drug store, it was dinner time.  I started making dinner and Ken jumped in to take over from me.  While he was cooking, he saw what he thought was a bee and being allergic to them and slightly irrational about them, he grabbed the vacuum (don't ask) and was going to suck it up.  Instead, he accidentally kicked the vacuum and broke his toe.  He's now all black and blue and puffed up and hurting a lot.  He's good to break a toe every six months or so.

After dinner, I've been working on chores.  I want a do-over for today.  Luckily Wednesday is a holiday and I get my chance then.