Whiiiine

I am staying at my parents house to take care of the dogs, cats, and my poor old fish tank which is covered in algae.

I am staying by myself.

I am staying here without my boyfriend.

I am staying with my boys, Io and Oz, who will cover all of my clothes with black kitty fur.

I am staying here AT NIGHT WHICH IS SCARY. Good thing I have four animals who will warn me of danger by probably hiding under my bed.

(Okay, not true. The dogs would bark a lot too.)

I miss Nick.

Boy, Interrupted

Title: Boy, Interrupted. Based on a true story.

Date: Today
Time: Approximately 4:30pm
Location: Driving from Bed Bath & Beyond, en route to Target
Driver: Katie, wearing sunglasses, a frown, and shoes that started out comfy but are now painful
Passenger: Nick, general direction-giver, human GPS, and patient boyfriend

Background: Nick has a cold. A bad, bad cold. Being the lovely thoughtful person that I am, I dragged him out to buy a knife block set and spend hours wandering stores. This is us driving out of the parking lot by the mall.

* * *
Katie, peering around to make sure all stupid squishable pedestrians have vacated the vicinity, finally turns attention to sick boyfriend who has been quieter and quieter.

"How are you feeling?" I ask, glancing over.

"Crappy," sick boyfriend starts, turning towards me. "I'm pretty sure I have a fever, my throat hurts, I keep sneezing, and my nose is a faucet."

"You poor thing!" I nod sympathetically, patting his knee.

He continues, "I'm pretty sure my leg fell off back in the cutlery section of Bed Bath & Beyond, I'm seeing quadruple, and --"

"CRAP! NICK, DO I TURN RIGHT? Shit! I'm turning right. Was that right? Should I have gone straight?"

Nick gives me a calm, patient stare. The way you would look at someone who has traumatically lost their sanity and you feel pity and compassion for them, and no matter what they do you will never lose your temper because that would be like shouting at a dumb dog.

"Katie, open your eyes." He waits while I comply. "Turn left here. Now go straight. Move into the left lane. Good. Go straight again. Now left, straight, then turn right here and now you should know where we are."

I wipe the sweat off my forehead dramatically. "Phew! Good thing I have you!"

You can practically hear his eyes rolling.

I glance hopefully towards sick boyfriend. "So, sweetie, what were you saying about how you were feeling?"

"Nope. Forget it. I'm not gonna talk to you anymore. You don't listen anyways."

* * *

The End

Packing

There are not words to express today. 

At least not words for polite company. 

^_-

To summarize: Packed. Lifted. Carried. Packed. Played tetris by fitting boxes and dressers and tables into a car. Brought Nellie-kitten to the park-and-ride and picked her back up after she was at PetCo to try to get adopted. Brought Billy-kitten to the veterinary because he has persistent diarrhea that is not going away with regular treatments. Tried to find a new foster home for babies. Failed. Ran out of kitten food. Drove to Nick's, ate delicious turkey chili and cornbread. Drove Nick to my house, watched Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp (amazing!) and made chewy chocolate chip cookies to bribe people to help us move tomorrow. Drove us back to his. Packed more. Drove home. Cleaned. 

WE MOVE TOMORROW HOLY CRAP. 

At nine tomorrow morning Nick and I will be at our apartment filling out paperwork and getting keys and giving them money. At ten or ten thirty our parents will show up with tightly packed trucks and SUV's. We will begin to move. Will probably get tired. I will offer cookies and beg them to keep lifting the heavy things so I don't have to. Katie will lift heavy things. Then eat a cookie or five. 

This time tomorrow night Nick and I will be in our first ever apartment. WHEEEEEEE!!! 

BBC Update

Bikini Body Challenge Update: Man, I suck at sticking with challenges.

Beginning Weight (from, like, a year ago): 152

Current Weight: 147

Goal Weight: 140

Summary: I did lose weight. And then I found it again! ^_^ When I had serious tummy troubles I dropped twenty pounds and went down to like, 135, which is too skinny for me. I'm happy at 140-145. Unfortunately (and also fortunately) my tummy troubles started to go away and I actually managed to start eating, which translated to over-eating. (Crap!)

So now, once again, it is bikini season and I am not happy with the way I look in my bikini.

Solution: Bikini Body Challenge 2010!!!

I hereby declare that I will start to exercise for at least twenty minutes a day, and eat healthy, and stop over-eating. Feel free to pester me about behaving. Feel free to join me! Let me know where you stand and where you want to be, whether or it maintaining or losing! (Or gaining a bikini booty! Be like Kim Kardashian!)

Fun up High

Sap in the Sand

Silhouette Smooch

God, He's Cute

Happy

Nick and I, sitting on a gnarled huge tree trunk on the beach right next to Van Damme, watching the sunset while Ryan was our personal photographer. He took a bunch that I adore and will be printing out to hang in our future apartment.

Exhausted and Dirty

Holy crap on toast, I am so pooped right now! My legs are throbbing in pain from walking. (Oh God am I ever lame. Pretend that they're sore from snorkeling through the Caribbean instead.)

I'm lying in bed but my brain is going a hundred miles a minute, and if Aimee called me right now to babysit I would jump up and jog over. My brain and legs are so contrary because I just cleaned for eleven hours in one go. (You know what would sound impressive? If I said 'eleven hours and I cleaned the house top to bottom'. But that would be someone else's blog, because you know what?) It took me eleven hours to clean my room.

I'll just let you absorb that little tidbit of horrifying information.

Seriously. Whose room is so gross it takes eleven hours to make it clean? WHOSE? (Sidenote; since I am so tired normal things are looking weird, and I just noticed that "whose" is "w"-"hose" and it's weird that the word "hose" is in a possessive form of "who". Now, onward!) Really, who has such a dirty room? There's only so much dusting and vacuuming a person can do before they keel over.

Those of you who know me and/or have seen my dirty room are probably shaking your heads right now in disbelief that I am pretending shocked disbelief. Well, YOU ARE RIGHT. I AM DIRTY. My room is dirty and full of dust and cat litter and EW, if I think about it then yes, I get grossed out too. So I don't.

I wish I had taken a "before" picture but you will have to use your memories for that and settle for "after" pictures. I dusted and vacuumed and mopped repeatedly, threw away and donated and organized and neatened (as strange as it is I am slightly OCD about things being in order. My room can be a hurricane but MY BOOKSHELF WILL BE IN THE RIGHT ORDER. Everything in it's proper place! Or ELSE.) and now my room is so beautiful that I simply must share it with you . . .

. . . tomorrow. (Hey, I'm exhausted and sore here. Ninight!)

Wondering

. . . if I really need to be on the dose of Kapidex that I am , because I went off it for a week and a half and didn't have that many problems. (Kapidex 60mg is the medication that controls how much acid my stomach produces, because I have too much and then I get ouchy tummy). I am so happy that I was okay without it! I only took two Prilosec and one Prevacid over the week and a half to control acid, but I was fine until I ate a huge garlicky dinner. Then my tummy laughed at me for thinking I could eat that much garlic without feeling icky. So I picked up my Kapidex today and I think I will take it every other day and see how that goes. I suspect it will go fabulously.

Happy

. . . because Mom and Dad called us from Alaska! For two and a half weeks all we had for communication was a few emails so it was exciting to hear their voices again. They are having a wonderful time on their 26 day trip from Beijing to Alaska.

We're doing well here too, bar a few arguments and if you ignore the mess. ^_- And the mess even isn't that bad--it's not any worse than it ever gets with Mom and Dad here, and we all recognize that we will spend a while cleaning before they arrive this Saturday night. It's been nice being in charge but I miss my padres.

Suspicions

I suspect that if I invented something to track down missing remotes I would become rich. Because this morning I tore the living room apart looking for our TV remote and came *this* close to texting Troy and demanding to know where he had hidden it. And then I found it lying innocently under a blanket. Figures.

Frustrated

. . . because I recently bought twelve new fish (actually I was given some babies for free!) and I've lost three already because my pH went wonky, and now since they are stressed from the bad water conditions I have two more that look like they are suffering from velvet. I just bought a Neutral Controller that will keep the pH at 7.0 and I've treated for the infections, so I hope that it works quickly.

Proud

. . . because I fixed the toilet! Me! Our toilet hasn't worked right since we had our bathroom remodeled and Troy and I haven't been able to use it for weeks because we were lazy and didn't want to fix it and I finally rolled up my metaphorical sleeves and dove in. Whee!

I also deep cleaned Mom and Dad's bathroom and my own! They're soooo beautiful and sparkly. No one is allowed to use them ever again.

Freedom . . .

. . . is having my mom's credit card while she and dad are on their 23 day long cruise from China to Alaska. Unfortunately I'm too terrified of my mom to use it for anything besides groceries. The downside to having a credit card since my parents are on the other side of the world is that all of a sudden I'm veeeery aware of exactly how fast the grass grows and thus needs to be mowed, how annoying it is to have to shepherd two eighteen-year-old, and how much mess three people can make in the house. The upside is I'm in chaaaaarge! Wheee!

Resolved

Just turned down a cruise to Europe in favor of getting two AS degrees and being able to afford a couch for our future apartment. Currently in shock. Wondering if I made the right choice. Minutes after hanging up the phone with my aunt to tell her no, thank you, I had a screechy conversation with my mom and Quentin and Troy in which I questioned every part of that decision. Still feeling screechy and like I might pull out my hair.

New Katie Slogan:

I'd rather be in Rome.

Conflicted

Imagine coming home and discovering that you have been invited on a cruise to Europe. The cruise itself is paid for, you just have to pay half of the airfare, and you'd be going with people that you know and love. Sounds too good to pass up, right?

Gah, I don't know.

My aunt and her family have an extra bed in their cabin that I could take, which is so awesome. I've cruised with them a bunch before and always have a great time. And it's EUROPE! We'd be stopping in Gibraltar, Alicante, Barcelona, Marseille, Florence, and Rome, and spending four days in Rome after the cruise before flying home. I am dying to go.

BUT. (Always a but. Stupid buts.) I'm saving up to move out with Nick. We already feel poor, and I've stopped spending my money, and I'm plotting ways to make more money over the summer. This trip I would be paying about 450 for airfare, a hundred or two for souvenirs, and god knows how much for trip excursions. I figure I'm looking at about a thousand dollars, which is about three months rent. (EEK!) (Nick seconds this EEK, but in a more manly way.)

Everything else is totally working out--my work is so understanding (I think my supervisor would go instead of me if she could ^_^), my yoga instructor says I can just do some extra work on my own to make up for the missed classes, and my online classes I could do on the ship.

I did wake up this morning and suddenly remember that I have to take a microbiology final exam for my Incomplete in microbiology from last semester (when I was sick with IBS/nervous stomach/anxiety and fell behind) and that I would be missing that test. So I wouldn't get my AS degrees that I was planning on getting come May. (Come to think of it, I think I'd miss the whole stage walking/accepting my degrees altogether if I go. Jeez.)

I am conflicted. I want to go so, so bad. It's just really bad timing. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I have to decide by tonight.

So excited . . .

. . . because Nick and I are getting an apartment together! We've talked about moving in together for a long time but there was not good reason to because we were going to a school that was just a twenty minute drive away from our parent's homes. Now that Nick was accepted to a CA city college that's an hour away from our homes in good traffic, we have a good reason! He starts working on his engineering degree in fall '10 and I start the fall after for my teaching degree. I'll miss living at home and not paying for everything but I'm so excited to get our own place and live with Nick!

Paranoia from an Anxious Mind

I am a nervous person even without the anxiety that developed from my IBS. I bit my nails, I forbade my brother from doing anything dangerous like jumping out of airplanes or joining the military, I would get nervous stomachaches whenever I got a new boyfriend (on an interesting note, I did not get a stomachache when I started dating Nick. It's meant to beeee!) My mind can take a perfectly normal situation and make it into a scenario full of DOOM.

Yesterday, Nick was supposed to pick me up at 7:30AM for us to go to school. He is never, ever late, whereas I am a chronically late kind of girl. Yesterday, Nick was late. Allow me to show you the progression of my paranoid mind.

7:30 AM-- Where is Nick? He's never late. Oh well, at least I have time to put on make-up!

7:32 AM-- He's still not here. I can re-heat my peppermint tea!

7:33 AM-- Do I have everything? He's going to be grumpy if I take a ten more minutes to get ready if we're already running late. Must find yoga mat!

7:36 AM-- Still not here?! Maybe I should call his house. No, that would be too panicky. Be calm, Katie.

7:37 AM-- What if something happened? He's never this late! Ohgodohgodohgod. Must be calm.

7:38 AM-- HE'S DEAD! Dead in a ditch on the road! Crashed into a telephone pole! I'll call his cell, and if he doesn't answer I'll know that he's lying unconscious in his car's wreckage with gasoline seeping out of the tank about to light on FIRE!

7:39 AM-- I'm calling his house to see what time he left so I can calculate how likely it is that he's dead in a ditch at this very moment. No, Katie, be calm. That's unlikely. He's a good driver. Wait another minute to see if he shows up, then call.

7:40 AM-- Still no Nick oh god even though he's a good driver maybe someone else hit him oh my god I have to call his house right this instant my stomach hurts ow oh god--

7:40 and 43 seconds, Nick pulls up. I melt into a puddle of profoundly relieved goo and then pull myself together, order myself to not fling myself into his arms because then he'll think I'm weird, climb into the car and finally hiss, "Never be late again because I can't take it!" He just laughed and said he was only late because he forgot he was picking me up today and got onto the freeway before he remembered. We'll see what he thinks about me after he reads this post. ^_^