Mixed Bag

It's been kind of a good/bad thing here at the Cyber Hermit household lately.

The semester started which is not all bad.  Now that Academic Advising has changed buildings, we don't get nearly as many students coming into our office and asking where the fourth floor is :).  My night class seems to be okay so far.  It's a professor I've had before so I know what to expect in terms of certain things.  I'm only worried about who is going to be in my group for the group project.  At this point in the program, I know the majority of the people and there are some who are definitely in the DO NOT WANT category.  Not yet sure how the independent study is going to go.  I meet with the instructor for the first time tomorrow.

The Spousal Unit continues to be up and down.  He saw our counselor by himself last week and it appears to have been a good appointment - I try not to ask too much about individual appointments or his other meetings since he says he feels "interrogated" - but he has yet to sit down and talk with me re: his homework.  That, however, is on him and I am most assuredly not his mommy.

On the better side, he has asked me to pray with him both morning and night which is something that had gone by the wayside a while back.  It's not necessarily long or involved but we both get on our knees and spend some time praying to God, employing that ol' thanksgiving, prayer and supplication thing.

And God totally got us a new apartment which we will move into in April (the week my final paper is due for my night class!).  Our current place said that since our lease expires March 31st and we will be here 2.5 weeks past that, they wanted to charge us $1900 for the privilege!  We currently have them talked down to somewhere in the $1500 range but...wow.  Their reasoning is this 97% occupany figure they like to tout as to how their 30-year-old apartments are in such high demand (remember, these are the apartments where I came home to find the entire back of the apartment torn off because it was *rotten* underneath).  Our response was the 97% may be true, but how long do these people stay?  In our little four-plex, where we have been for three years, we are the residents with the most longevity.  We are on our third set of neighbors in *each* of the three apartments around us during that time.  Still, God has a new place for us and I've been praying that He will have his hand on everything - including all the money needed to move in and out of both places (and hiring movers!).

In *really* good news, I am finally at my goal weight:

This means I move out of Phase 1 and into Phase 2.  Protein at lunch!  The grilled turkey patty nearly made me incandescent with joy :).  I will spend two weeks in this phase and then move into Phase 3, P3 being the Return of Breakfast.

The only thing I have to watch out for is my mindset.  I know I can get wrapped around the axle over weight and a number like *that*.  Just because I'm changing up what I eat and we're getting my pancreas back into the act does not mean that I am going to balloon up like Violet Beauregard. Away with you, unrealistic expectations!

So there is good, bad and in-between.  I am working on continuing to pray on my own and keep in mind that quote about prayer changing me.  I am still trying to find something that I can study, and let go of what I cannot control. 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Project 365: Week 2

It has been a good week which as all last weeks before the start of a new semester should be :).  All the work of the weekend (grocery shopping, etc) has been done and I can now dedicate the rest of the weekend to sloth!  Yay, sloth!  And now?  Pictures:


My favorite munchkins next to my granddaughters sent me a new picture of themselves:

Not pictured is their big brother but I have known all three of these guys since they were hanging out in a nine months, rental free state :).  I miss them.


Obligatory Cat Photo.  We had a printer box in the corner of the office for a few weeks and the cats loved it.  They slept in it, slept on top of it, rolled around on the plastic bag the printer was in...and then we were horribly mean people and threw it out.  Now they comfort themselves with the memory of better times:

Food note:  I like edamame!  Who knew?  Going to try roasting them later this week:

Best machine ever!  I love not having to tromp to the campus Sbux in the morning for a cup of burned tasting coffee.  And I get to choose different flavors too:

The new semester starts on Monday.  On the good side?  I'm on the downhill slope to finishing my Master's with an expected graduation this fall.  On the downside:  this is the size of print for one of my texts this semester...and there's no pictures:

Post New Year's Goals Post/P365 - Week 1 (sort of)

Progress!  In keeping with my previous New Year's Goals post, I have cleaned out my closet of clothes that just don't fit/I haven't worn in forever and I've also cleaned every room of this apartment minus the master bathroom (which will hopefully happen this weekend).

I also took four pairs of pants (I have more but I'm going to have to do this piecemeal) down to the tailor to be taken in.  That was an experience.  I put them on and literally had to hold them up so they wouldn't just drop down to my ankles while I was playing mannequin on the tailor's stand.  There were pins everywhere!  On my hips, down the legs, in the posterior...which made it really fun to try to take each pair off when the time came :).  Hopefully, I can get one or two pairs down each payday and get them taken care of.  All the pants are Lane Bryant and they are of very good quality.  Since there is a decent delta between getting them altered versus buying new ones, I'd much rather get them altered and continue to be able to use them!

I've also been trying to keep a small visual "diary" re: the weight loss thing.  Since I am close to reaching my goal, I'm now going to bore you all with pictures.  Actually, they are behind the cut so you can choose to be bored or not :).

Not New Year's Resolutions

I tend not to do resolutions - too much pressure :).  Instead, I try to make some goals that can be...flexible.  So, in no particular order, this year's goals are:

1. Finish my Master's without killing myself: I have six classes left so I should graduate at the end of Fall 2013. While I still want to do well (ahem...very well, I know me), I am going to try to relax a little and not spend three-four hours studying and paper-writing every Saturday at Guillermo's. I will take a little time for myself on the weekends and a little extra time for the Spousal Unit versus the weekends only being for school, chores and grocery shopping.

2. Sensibly keep my weight off and not give in to the voice in my head: I have six more pounds to go and then I will be at my goal of 180 (60 pounds gone). Then I start the rest of the phases that will tell if my pancreas has reset itself to function as it should and I learn what I can/cannot eat. While the Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish stoicism gifted to me by my ancestors can certainly be helpful at times (i.e., having a goal and working towards it), it is a double-edged sword in that I have an excellent ability to berate myself should I not do EXACTLY what I think should be done to the exact specifications in my head. I have already told my mother that I do NOT want a scale (because I will fixate on the number on the scale) and I think she...well, not "understood" but knows I'm serious. I will continue to eat the way I need to and get back to exercising (YAY!) when I am released to do so.

3. Get back to posting to P365 more. This last year has been...well, it's been. Posting to P365 is part of a larger goal to remember there are other things out there and stop being so internally focused on the narrow world of school and the SU. I'd like to post at least twice a month and comment on other folks' pictures as well.

4. Find some good Bible-study type books and get back in the habit. My quiet time has taken a bit of a hit over the past year. Mostly I just pray in the mornings. Sometimes it's a good conversation and sometimes it's "Dude, I got nothin' here.". Like any other genre, however, there are good books and there is some absolute crap out there and it can get exhausting to sift through it. But I will find something and use it.

5. Continue knitting (yeah, I know...so hard :P). I have four specific projects that I want to complete: a shawl for my mom, a dress for my other granddaughter, Em, the hitchhiker scarf, and a wrap.

6. Continue working with our couples counselor and also try to not let the SU's alcohol abuse permeate my life to such an extent. While I can be cautious and I have the right to ask questions, I have to learn to separate the events from the person and make some kind of mental/emotional dividing line for myself.  Otherwise, I am going to make myself crazy with paranoia and constantly trying to guess whether or not I am being told the truth.  Under this heading also falls "working to continue to love him (love being an active verb)" and "be the wife I am called to be".

7.  Clean my bedroom and get rid of clothes that I don't need/use anymore.

8.  Move!  Dependent on our tax return, we should have enough money to be able to pay for a move to a new apartment complex sometime between January-April.  Praying that God will take care of that as well as open up a ground-floor apartment that has what we need in the complex we think we should move to.