I’ve had this “Meal Replacement Bar” in my desk for a couple weeks, and finally got desperate enough to try it. (One for hate of the extra weight I’ve put on in the past month, two for lack of money to go get anything else.) It’s the South Beach Diet brand made by Kraft. Chocolate and Peanut Butter ‘flavor’. I have to say… it was good! Really good! I took the first bite after bracing myself and found myself savoring every bite. Wow… I didn’t know diet food was this good! LOL.
Stats, for those who must know:

210 Calories
19g Protein
6g Fiber
23 Vitamins and Minerals, all but one being 25% RDA

Wow, that’s no joke! I might have to get some more of these.

Job 1: Focus. I don’t need to learn any new stuff right now. I can pay people to do those things, if I can just get the projects. I may very well not make any money this way, but at least I will be getting projects, which will get me referrals and more projects, and before I know it working that system will start to build up an income for myself as well as everyone else I’ll have been paying. I need to focus on getting projects. Marketing. This would include redoing my own business site… again… to include a blog and updating it regularly. Ugh. Or at least getting the site *how* it needs to be even if I don’t utilize the blogging part of it yet. And getting out there and getting contracts signed.

Job 2: Sleep. And get up early. Not to mention it will help focus me since I won’t be waking up rushed and therefore scatter-brained in the “put-out-fires” mentality. And less impacted by stress. Won’t that be nice! But how? I even feel better when I’m get up in the morning and don’t sleep into the day. But still I just can’t seem to get it together in that department. Well, I happened upon this site while reading some work stuff, and found this article. I’m going to start tonight. I don’t care what’s not done, or how the apartment looks, or anything else. I’m going to go to bed when I’m tired, and God help me… get up at a time that I can’t even remember the last time I got up at. I feared that getting in this habit would leave me going to bed at early hours to where I could never see my kids or have a social life, but hopefully what he says is correct. Somehow I just know it has to be. I’m so tired of being tired. Maybe then I can kick this sugar/caffeine (soda) habit which I know isn’t helping matters but is currently necessary all-the-same.

Wish me luck!

Been posting a lot about what I’m doin’, probably about time for a how I’m doin’.

I didn’t get paid.

So I couldn’t pay my rent.

And my checks are bouncing. Add fees now. More debt. Exponentially.

And now, since the 1st, my apartment’s air conditioner broke. But I can’t call to have it fixed, because I haven’t paid my rent.

And we’re having the hottest heat wave of the summer. And it has decided to be the longest heat wave as well.

It’s nice, because it makes one lose their appetite. And finding the silver lining, I hope maybe I’ll lose a pound or two.

But then my children also lose their appetites and are up all night with hurting tummies because they have no food in them. And then because they’re hungry and tired they cry nonstop.

The sweat just drips off of me… us…, even without the slightest movement.

We leave the windows open in hope of some sort of relief, but the screens have been cut so had to be removed. Complete paranoia as the kids love looking outside, and crippling fear at the thought of the 2 year-old falling out the window of our 2nd story apartment.

The estranged husband thinks maybe God’s trying to tell me I should be back with him. Well then He would need to make him be nice to me. Consistently, and not just when he’s psyched himself up for the wonderment that is me. That’s all I’m sayin’. God knows that.

Then night falls, and I wait for the relief, but it’s still 80 degrees out there. And now the bugs have come through the screenless windows. They find me irresistable with my sweaty self. Then my hair touches my arm and I bug out, thinking it’s another one to shoo off myself. Because sometimes it really is. And I need to catch them before they bite me.

I try to open my (screened) bedroom window, but it is stuck shut again. Fuck.

Last night I barely slept because I was just so hot.

This morning I sweated heavily just getting ready for the day. I was barely just standing still.

And still, at midnight, I drip sweat.

And wonder if I’ll sleep tonight now that I’m tireder after having not slept much last night.

It’ll work out. That much I know. And not because I was circumstantially forced into moving back in with DH to be “comfortable” (like, when was living together ever comfortable? We’re not even comfortable together for our limited time together now!) and “to work on our relationship”. But I do pray relief comes soon. Preferably in the form of checks in large amounts which come regularly from here on out. No matter what, I know He’s got it covered, though. So what’s a little sweat and military tactics with the lack of sleep and starvation and overloading of my senses with crying kids? I’ma be a’ight. Somehow. Not much choice, I guess.

Yep.

I’m home!

Trip was excellent. Had a fairly major squabble with DH on the morning that we came back home, but the fact that he took me to a really cool restaurant I’d been peeping all weekend helped. And I guess those couple of those big margaritas didn’t hurt either. They had me feeling pretty good in spite of him, and able to deal with him in the car on the long way home… which ended up a lot longer due to a missed turn which landed us on the other side of the state  (oops!). We worked it all out the following evening, and I think made a breakthrough. At least it was a productive fight, eh?

The worst part was when we got home, though. When we were leaving to go on the trip I got all the pics on the camera OFF the camera, but didn’t have time to back them up to CD. So I turned the computer off, which is something that just doesn’t happen usually. Afterall, it’s hard for a computer to crash and lose all your information when it’s not on! Besides, just a few months ago I had it overheating and all sorts of awful stuff even with a flash fire in there because of some dust getting burnt up. So it was off.

We got home, I got everything taken care of and put away, and turned my computer on. And there was the awfullest grinding noise I’d ever heard. Pretty disheartening, it was. I called DH right away and he said it sounded like it was failing. So I backed up my pics real quick, hoping it wouldn’t go kaput right away. DH said not to turn it off, that if it’s booted, to leave it booted because it might not next time. Then later my toe brushed up against the power button and shut it off. Crap! It booted again, loudly. Then last night I went home to find out that X, who is now just 3 weeks shy of turning 2, pressed the button and shut it off. Except it booted quietly then. I’d like to think that’s a good sign, but I know better. These problems don’t just go away.

The good news about all that, though, is that I had been really Jonesin’ for a bigger hard drive. I’ve amassed quite the music collection, plus I take my pictures at high resolution so that also takes up a lot of space. Not to mention the programs I use, the files they create, and the setup files for different versions of all the programs (sometimes it’s better to have an old version but you don’t know until that time comes). And that’s why my 160GB hard drive is almost full, and I’m needing at least a 320. Except I *could* rearrange, etc etc, and “make do”. But now that the old one is flopping anyway… I see no reason not to put the extra $50 on it to double the space. Of course, not that I’ve got the money for even the smaller drive right now, but I’m hoping to work out a payment arrangement or something with DH. I think he gets “terms” with his vendors anyway…

Anyway, back to the trip- we had a blast with the glow-in-the-dark miniature golf, the train show, the bounce arena (a 13,000 square foot place filled with really huge ‘moonwalking’ type stuff with slides and tunnels etc), finding tons of great food, etc, but would also like to go back during the summer. The weather was fantastic, plenty of sun to shine off the bay and *no snow*, but it seemed there were more places closed than open because it was off-season. We never made it to the paint-your-own-pottery place and that would be fun too.

Well anyway, I’m back. You can stop missing me now

Let’s see how quick I can make this…

The baby’s gone. Bright red bleeding started at a regular flow on Sunday night. I wept for a half hour or more and finally fell asleep. More bleeding, cramps and lots of blood, baby passed at 8:10 I think. Maybe 7:10. Will have to check phone records and confirm. I hemorrhaged a bit but nothing a little iron didn’t take care of. An overnight pad every half hour for a few hours, then it was abruptly over. Not much cause for concern because I’m a bleeder anyway. We were careful and watchful and no medical intervention was necessary (and we mostly knew it wouldn’t be, but we weren’t wreckless either). As for the baby itself… can’t throw it away… can’t flush it… what in the world do you do with your dead baby?? Can’t plant it, can’t take it into the docs for testing for reasons too long for this post, so when I had to do something with it on my way to bed, it got put into a sealed bowl which was put way back in my fridge. Which, I know, sounds pretty… not right. Unbalanced, maybe. See, there’s not even a word for it. But seriously- what in the world do you do with your dead child, who wasn’t far enough along for a ‘proper’ burial or death certificate. Either way, the baby’s gone. I had gone shopping to get excited about it and promptly returned everything the next day. I didn’t want that hanging over my head too. I did hang on to 3 items which were really nice and I had gotten on a great sale… just in case. But they’re bagged, receipted, in the van, and pretty ignorable (not in the way) so not weighing on me.

My daycare mom had her baby the next day. So I’ve got a lot of days off now since the other mom is also on Maternity leave for who-knows-how-long and my only other kid only comes on Mondays and Tuesdays. I’ve got Wed-Fri free for at least a couple weeks now!! Yay! Going to the hospital and seeing the baby was alright. She was all alone by the time we got there and I feared she’d get lonely so we stayed for well over an hour, until closing time. The kids were amusing her so I don’t think (hopefully) we overstayed our welcome. Baby was cute.

My PDA- it works again!!! Woo-hoo!! You seriously don’t know how happy that makes me.

I’ve lost 2 more pounds in the past couple days. So I’m back down to what I was a couple weeks ago when I got all stressed and did my normal binging-and-gorging thing and ended up gaining back 4 of the 8 I had lost a few weeks prior. Ahh, I love food. Except I haven’t eaten any since 48 hours ago when a friend brought a Meatball Sub from Subway. Mmmm… Footlong on white with provalone, parmesan and oregano. Well, yesterday I had a Mountain Dew, candy bar (Peanut Butter Twix… MMMM), and some Gardettos (original mix… MMMM). That counts for food, right? I call it the candy diet. Apparently it’s working well! LOL Thank God for really great vitamins, eh? So lets see… 2 down, just 35 more to go! *sigh* Started back on the TrimSpa today. That’s some pretty cool stuff. Except it may have caused the miscarriage, but that’s a whole lot of speculation and probably unlikely anyway. Besides, we’ll never know and I’m not pregnant anymore anyway. So Viva la Skinny! I was in a decent amount of discomfort what with my uterus stretching out and whatnot, and I didn’t want to aggrevate it more so stopped working out. Though I had barely started, I was doing better with it than I ever have, so hopefully I’ll be able to pick back up with it right where I left off. It wouldn’t bother me to hang on to up to 10 pounds if it’s muscle. But all this fat has got to go. It even feels gross.

I went to my first Chamber of Commerce meeting this week. It was pretty cool. Not much time for networking as it was an official event with a presentation and everything, but it was good to meet the couple people I did. And the sitting President strongly indicated they’re going to be needing a new web designer to manage the site, which they’re paying to have done. What great timing! Crossing my fingers there.

I got a call today, and found out that my business got its first call at the office! Woo-hoo!!! It must be listed somewhere already because it was a marketer lol. But who cares?!? I got my first business call!! lol

I also sent my text in for the Yellow Pages ad. I’m so excited. It’ll come out in December.

The biggest thing for me to deal with now is getting the voice mail at the office to say my web design company’s business name instead of the name of DH’s old business that I’m adopting the number from! He said he got some equipment in today that may or may not take care of the problem he was having in getting the voice mail able to be changed. He’ll work on it this weekend. If it doesn’t, then I’ll just get an ‘old-fasioned’, mechanical (GASP!), answering machine to intercept the line before the current voice mail grabs it. :D

That might be about it. Oh- the drawer on my desk fell off! It had been loose, and then I was trying to pull it out and down it came! I’m pretty glad, though, because where my knees kept hitting it before (see, it’s not always sexy to have long legs), even with the keyboard tray pulled all the way out, now they’ve got some breathing room!

My room is still a mess. 4 huge piles of paper, and that doesn’t even count the scatterings across my desk which prevent me from seeing it on any of the 3 levels it has. Eek. I’m really hoping we can get that file cabinet from the garage into this here bedroom because I need it! Stuff is getting lost!

So anyway, I should probably go bathe myself at some point today. And then I have to pick up the Challah for church tomorrow. Hmm, I wonder if it’s my turn for kids’ snacks again. I should probably check on that. Shabbat Shalom, y’all.